The Demons Advertised Jesus which makes no sense unless he was not sent by God

The gospels of Mark, Matthew and Luke - not John - dwell heavily on how Jesus can put demons out of people. They seem embarrassed about saying too much about the alleged resurrection but they don't have that shyness with the exorcism stories. John speaks of Jesus defeating Satan and his minions but does not say if this has anything to do with possession or not.
 
The demons in the gospels do not show their presence by acting in horror movie fashion.  Jesus never encountered victims talking in strange voices or vomiting nails or heads spinning.  There is nothing like possession as it is depicted in horror films such as the Exorcist or even Catholic 'true' stories about demons. Jesus was apparently pandering to superstitious people who were putting illnesses down to demons.

Legion however looks like an exception but extreme mental illness would explain a lot of his behaviour. The gospel says he broke chains but it does not say anybody was putting him in chains and he just broke them immediately. The fact that they were able to put the chains on him shows he was finding a way to break them. In the gospel then the person merely has a normal illness that the demons are behind. That to some suggests demons are blamed for all illnesses on earth. Or some illnesses. Possession is treated as a health matter not a moral or spiritual matter. The demon must have magical or supernatural power if he can make a person sick who should not be sick.
 
The gospels show that the Catholic Church criteria for working out if a person is possessed is in fact making sure most cases will be overlooked. The criteria is akin to horror novels and sickness alone is never enough in the Church to indicate a possible demonic agent. If you, like some fundamentalists, think the Whore of Babylon in the Bible who is full of demons and who keeps trying to look holy and good is the Catholic Church you will have food for thought here.
 
Back to Jesus.
 
Jesus was simply pretending to cast out demons and manipulating the desperate sick to get an audience.
 
Jesus talks to the demons instead of saying to the victim, "I cast the evil spirit out of you." He does not need to talk to the demon and why is the demon who Catholics say would suffer if somebody sprinkled holy water able to talk to him? He may be talking to the demon to show he considers it really a person.
 
The gospel accounts of Jesus casting out demons have them telling people he is God's son before he get them out. This is clearly contrived.

Alarmingly Jesus lets them call him by name and then acts to shut them up.  Why does his magic only silence them when it is too late?  And worse.  The magical beliefs and religious doctrines of the day warned that if a demon calls you by name that is a sign it is in you as well.
 
Let us look at what we can learn about Jesus and his seeming alliance with demons.

Mark 1:24, 25, 34 New International Version

Demons tell Jesus, “What do you want with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are—the Holy One of God!”

COMMENT: THE DEMON PRETENDS TO BE AFRAID. WHY DO THE DEMONS PLURAL SAY THEY FEAR JESUS AND WHY DOES IT SWITCH TO ONE DEMON SAYING HE KNOWS JESUS IS THE HOLY ONE OF GOD.

IF THE DEMONS ARE AFRAID WHY WOULD THEY SPEAK TO HIM AT ALL AND REMIND HIM TO DESTROY THEM IF THAT WAS HIS WILL?

THE DEMONS KNEW THAT PEOPLE WOULD BELIEVE THEIR ASSERTION THAT JESUS WAS THE HOLY ONE OF GOD IF HE MANAGED TO GET THEM OUT.

"Be quiet!” said Jesus sternly. “Come out of him!”

JESUS DIDN'T HAVE TO SAY ANYTHING TO GET THEM OUT. HE TELLS THEM TO BE QUIET. HE COULD HAVE SAID NOTHING. SAYING "BE QUIET!" MEANS "I COULD HAVE STOPPED YOUR MOUTH WITH MY SUPERNATURAL POWERS BUT I LET YOU SPEAK AND THEN TELL YOU TO BE SILENT. THIS IS TO MAKE PEOPLE THINK YOU ARE LETTING MY GREAT SECRET OUT!"

"Jesus healed many who had various diseases. He also drove out many demons, but he would not let the demons speak because they knew who he was."

SO THE DEMONS WERE NOT GUESSING WHO HE WAS. THEY KNEW. IT SEEMS HE WAS NOW SILENCING THEM WHICH A BIT LATE UNLESS IT MEANS HE LET THEM CALL HIM THE SON OF GOD AND THEN FEIGNED OPPOSITION TO THEIR STATEMENT AND THEN THREW THEM OUT.
 
ANOTHER EXAMPLE

Mark 3:11,12 “Whenever the evil spirits saw him, they fell down before him, and cried out, 'You are the Son of God.' But he gave them strict orders not to tell who he was.”

THE DEMONS ARE VERY INTERESTED IN VENERATING JESUS AREN'T THEY?
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JESUS REFUSES TO CAST DEMON OUT OF A PAGAN GIRL
A Canaanite lady asked Jesus to have mercy on her and to save her daughter from the distress that a demon inflicted on her. “But he did not answer her a word. And his disciples came and implored Him, saying, “Send her away, for she is crying out after us”.

Jesus’ silence was rude. Nobody can say he was otherwise engaged for the text says he did not answer her not could not answer her. He did have a minute to speak to her when he was in earshot of her. He did not chastise his disciples for what they said for all of them asked him to get rid of her which suggests they knew he had the time to speak to her when he had time to give them his attention. They knew he was an evil man when they presented such a request to him though he had preached love and patience and knew it only took three seconds to say a word of comfort and cure the daughter. That is very important.

 “He answered, I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel”. Since this was a reply to their request to send her away it means, “I was not sent to help her”. He encouraged the disciples’ cruelty. The Gospels expect us to believe that such callous men would not lie about religion and miracles.

But the woman again begged him to help her. “And He answered, it is not right (proper, becoming or fair) to take the children’s bread and throw it to the little dogs”.

This was snappy. The Jews called non-Jews dogs. Little was a further fist in her face.

All Christians can say about this episode in which a man who boasted that he was meek and gentle (Matthew 20:28) is that he was joking. He was not for the woman had to insist for him to help. She didn’t think he was kidding. And it was no time for joking. To joke then and that way would have been most uncouth indeed. She was in distress and would have been hurt to hear herself and her daughter being called animals just because they belonged to another religion and race.

There is no hint in the passage that Jesus was joking. There is no evidence for a sense of humour in the gospels at all which makes it probable that he was serious.

When Jesus went to the trouble to explain why he could not help her he must have been serious. He explained instead of taking three seconds to heal her daughter.
 
It was nothing to Jesus to do what she asked. Giving to a person in need is as cheap as breathing when you can just fix things instantly as if by magic like Jesus supposedly could. This compounds and accentuates how racist and mean Jesus was. He talks as if it cost him power or energy as if he were a magician who had to sacrifice his own power to achieve some effect. If that was how he had to do things then there was no guarantee that the demon would leave the girl. He hated the victim so much that he delayed putting the demon out and only dealt with it reluctantly.
 
Whoever feels like that about demons and would let them stay in a person is for them. This is the man who said that letting demons stay in is supporting Satan’s kingdom for if Satan puts demons out his kingdom will not last. So possessing was very important to Satan. Jesus was probably only telling the demon to stay but hide better. Then he was passing that off as an exorcism!
 
The woman replied that even pups eat from the master’s table. She is saying that she and her daughter are dogs, inferior to Jews. She is sanctioning Jesus’ racism. Jesus was a racist human demon himself so to ask him to deal with demons is asking for trouble.
MARK 9
In Mark 9 Jesus is told that a demon is tormenting a boy and trying to kill him by actually throwing him into fire or water. Jesus accepts this account on the basis of hearsay! Irresponsible charlatan. He says he will cast it out and he then attempts to and it seems the attempt succeeded. He even tells the demon not to enter the boy again. The apostles wonder why they could not get it out and Jesus says that kind only gets driven out by prayer.
Read and see how it is not really a possession that was the problem but epilepsy.

17 Someone in the crowd replied, “Teacher, I brought You my son, who has a spirit that makes him mute.
18 Whenever it seizes him, it throws him to the ground. He foams at the mouth, gnashes his teeth, and becomes rigid. I asked Your disciples to drive it out, but they were unable.”

19 “O unbelieving generation!” Jesus replied. “How long must I remain with you? How long must I put up with you? Bring the boy to Me.”

20 So they brought him, and seeing Jesus, the spirit immediately threw the boy into a convulsion. He fell to the ground and rolled around, foaming at the mouth.

21 Jesus asked the boy’s father, “How long has this been with him?”

“From childhood,” he said.
22 It often throws him into the fire or into the water, trying to kill him. But if You can do anything, have compassion on us and help us.”

23 “If You can?” echoed Jesus. “All things are possible to him who believes!”

24 Immediately the boy’s father cried out, “I do believe; help my unbelief!”

25 When Jesus saw that a crowd had come running, He rebuked the unclean spirit. “You deaf and mute spirit,” He said, “I command you to come out and never enter him again.”

26 After shrieking and convulsing him violently, the spirit came out. The boy became like a corpse, so that many said, “He is dead.”
27 But Jesus took him by the hand and helped him to his feet, and he stood up.

28 After Jesus had gone into the house, His disciples asked Him privately, “Why couldn’t we drive it out?”

29 Jesus answered, “This kind cannot come out, except by prayer.”

The story holds no water at all. 

# Jesus was obnoxious not loving so how could he be in the right frame for ejecting a demon?  Jesus was rude and nasty to the father over the father not coming to him directly. Protestants see a warning here about praying to the saints and not Jesus directly!  And what about the other story about the man who was not a disciple getting a demon out by using Jesus' name? Jesus praised his action.

# Jesus is fed up with people not believing he can cast out demons. Egotist!

# Jesus lies that the apostles did not pray. The apostles definitely had to have been using prayer. At the time the story happened the apostles were long enough with Jesus to know what he thought about exorcism and prayer.

# Jesus never used prayer in this case! He just spoke to the demon person to person. Jesus said in Mark 9 that some kinds of demons cannot be got out by mere command. The parallel story in Matthew is interesting too. It says prayer AND fasting are needed. So Jesus is a showman taking advantage of the fact that it would take time to tell if the boy were really cured.

#Despite requiring faith from the man to be able to help and the man virtually denying he has faith he supposedly gets the demon out! And Jesus knows it is a deaf and mute spirit despite not knowing how long the demon was there. And how does he know it was one demon.

# The boy could have been a danger to others. It is dangerous if we start saying that a suicidal person is not suicidal but demon-possessed! This demon was able to use the victim to harm others so the message is a demon can perhaps get a victim to murder.

The whole thing is staged: Jesus and the "demon" collaborate to make him look like an exorcist.

Exorcism is sometimes said to show that the demons have already been defeated. If that is true then why does the exorcist have to act like somebody trying to be a victor? It is just a form of magic masquerading as something else.

WHY WOULD DEMONS TELL PEOPLE THAT JESUS WAS FROM GOD?

The Church performs exorcisms in the name of Jesus. Exorcism is a placebo at best for Jesus certainly had no power to exorcise anybody. Placebos are based on lies and nobody has the right to use a cruel placebo. You might give a patient sugar pills and tell him they are anti-depressants but you will not tell him to cut off his little toe for a miracle cure.

Demons would not advertise the son of God. They would advertise a fake son of God. The gospels say that Jesus let them speak and say that he was the Son of God and then he silenced them. If he really didn't want them to advertise he could have spoke with them when nobody else was in earshot or silenced them as they spoke - not after. No - he let them call him God's son and then shut them up. It was so obvious that he agreed that any publicity was good publicity. It had to look like the big mouthed demons knew who he was and let it slip out.

However Jesus wanted to stop them advertising too passionately in case people would realise that he and the demons were on the same side.

Christians speculate that the demons were telling people about Jesus before he was ready to tell them. And it is guessed that if people started believing in him because demons were testifying to him, that would just play into the hands of the Pharisees who were trying to make out that Jesus and Satan were in it together.

All that is pure speculation. The notion that the demons were telling before Jesus was ready overlooks the fact that he let the demons let the cat out of the bag. Nothing in the Bible says why Jesus silenced them. We are told that demons testifying to Jesus would make people disbelieve that testimony. That is nonsense. It would make some disbelieve. The Pharisees didn't perpetually try to make Jesus out to be consorting with demons nor did they emphasise it except occasionally. The New Testament does nothing at all to lay peoples worries about Jesus connection to the demons at rest. That it fails to shows that it does not care or isn't able to explain it. And it is something that calls for an explanation by people who know the circumstances and who were there. It is a serious matter.

What if the demons had to be told to keep quiet because they were saying that Jesus Christ was the Son of God before he wanted to advertise it? When demons start telling people that this is the man they should listen to for he is of God it proves that Jesus was one of their own kind. He was a son of the Devil. The demons would not say such a thing about him if it were the truth.

If evil spirits say you are the son of God and you snap at them to shut up you are clearly trying to confirm what they are saying.

Jesus would not have needed to tell the demons to keep quiet if they were speaking in a language unfamiliar to the people who were there. All he had to do was to put them out. If he was afraid to let people know that he claimed to be the Son of God then he was no miracle-worker and had no faith in divine providence.

Were the demons hoping that by confessing that Jesus was of God that this confession would stop people believing that he was? No for Jesus didn’t explain nor did anybody else think that the demons speaking for Jesus was a bad sign. It does not follow that everything a demon says is necessarily a lie. And why didn’t Jesus put the demons out before they spoke if it was a bad sign?

Why did the Christians preserve these stories when there was a chance that some would realise there was something sinister about Jesus? The gospels and Jesus denied the demonic support for Jesus showed his true colours for they proclaimed that the exorcisms were evidence that what the demons said was true. The demons would have known that it would have been a better idea to give no opinion on Jesus’ status if he was the Son of God for they knew Jesus’ supporters would use their testimony to get people to believe in him.

It is said that Jesus did not magically force them to tell for he did not want them to speak. Maybe he forced them to act as if it had slipped out and did want them to speak.
 
The demons were doing promotional work for Jesus and making it look like he was expelling them from people as a sort of confirmation of what they were saying about him. It is all so obviously contrived. He was their ally. He was their forbidden friend.