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RE: Can christians here explain Mark 5:2-13?
December 17, 2013 at 3:46 pm
This is rather a confusing mess with not enough details. I'll agree that it's probably just to show how much power Jesus holds over demons, since he not only wasn't afraid of them, but they were begging for mercy despite their numbers.
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RE: Can christians here explain Mark 5:2-13?
December 23, 2013 at 9:04 am
All three respondents got confused by question #5.
Perhaps they should have started by what they believe in by considering theology before responding.
Daemons cannot possess humans. Possession means ownership, and you can't be owned by a daemon. A daemon can only occupy a body the same way any parasite would.
The very phrase "daemon possession" is incorrect, it should be "daemon occupied" or something similar.
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RE: Can christians here explain Mark 5:2-13?
December 23, 2013 at 10:02 am
Possession can mean different things. If I take your TV, I possess it, but I don't own it. Demonic possession is a very common phrase, and I've never heard of a demon being in a body called a demonic occupation.
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RE: Can christians here explain Mark 5:2-13?
December 23, 2013 at 10:13 pm
Well a parasite hardly counts as possessing the body.
For Religion & Health see:[/b][/size] Williams & Sternthal. (2007). Spirituality, religion and health: Evidence and research directions. Med. J. Aust., 186(10), S47-S50. -LINK
The WIN/Gallup End of Year Survey 2013 found the US was perceived to be the greatest threat to world peace by a huge margin, with 24% of respondents fearful of the US followed by: 8% for Pakistan, and 6% for China. This was followed by 5% each for: Afghanistan, Iran, Israel, North Korea. -LINK
"That's disgusting. There were clean athletes out there that have had their whole careers ruined by people like Lance Armstrong who just bended thoughts to fit their circumstances. He didn't look up cheating because he wanted to stop, he wanted to justify what he was doing and to keep that continuing on." - Nicole Cooke
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RE: Can christians here explain Mark 5:2-13?
December 24, 2013 at 3:25 pm
There are parasites that can control ants and caterpillars and such. I've heard it said that maybe people that get unhealthily obsessed with cats might be influenced by the same kind of parasites that make rats attracted to cat dung.
Though that's not the same type of thing that's portrayed elsewhere with demonic possession.
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RE: Can christians here explain Mark 5:2-13?
December 24, 2013 at 3:52 pm
I just realized that I can no longer recall exactly how I understood this passage when I was a believer. I think that the story leaves enough questions unanswered that there is much for the reader to fill in. What I fill in now is probably different than what I understood then.
It seems the man is host to a very large number of demons (a Roman Legion was 6,000 men if I am not mistaken, and they possessed 2,000 swine afterwards). I honestly do not understand the mechanics of spirit-possession, but this text makes clear that the demons were able to not only control the man's actions, they lent him considerable physical strength (perhaps in the same way that god's spirit lent inhuman strength to Samson).
It seems the demons recognized the Christ (though we are not told by what specific means) and had to respect the power or influence he wielded over them. Yet it seems that though Jesus was commanding them to come out of the man, they were able to resist and he tried a different tack. Yet in the next verse they are again begging for mercy and asking permission to possess the swine. Jesus allows this...
...and the demons decide to make a right unholy mess of things by causing the swine to mass suicide, which most likely would have been a significant burden (economically and ecologically) for the locals, who were not very impressed by what they saw and asked Jesus to please take his act somewhere else. Did Jesus foresee this action? Did he allow it, as an object lesson to a spiritually weak community?
I do know that my belief at the time would have been that the demons survived the mass pigicide, being spirits who could release their grip on organic minds at any time. Thus it was really just a demonstration that Jesus was god (or his agent) and that he had authority even over the evil spirits regardless of his own human condition.
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RE: Can christians here explain Mark 5:2-13?
December 24, 2013 at 5:23 pm
@ Tonus, the demons want die they have an appointed date at the judgement, God will deal out their punishment and there's no doubt He want let them escape their date with Him.
GC
God loves those who believe and those who do not and the same goes for me, you have no choice in this matter. That puts the matter of total free will to rest.
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RE: Can christians here explain Mark 5:2-13?
December 24, 2013 at 6:47 pm
(December 24, 2013 at 5:23 pm)Godschild Wrote: @ Tonus, the demons want die they have an appointed date at the judgement, God will deal out their punishment and there's no doubt He want let them escape their date with Him.
Yeah, I never had the impression that they wanted to die, but that they saw an opportunity to do further harm to the local people (wiping out such a large herd of swine must have had a negative impact on them, from the loss of meat to the possible contamination of the water from the corpses). But Jesus would have known what they wanted, so why let them go? Perhaps the man's possession was due to some fault of the town? They were unbelievers or blasphemers or something? That would be the punishment, loss of a huge herd of livestock and possible threat to their drinking/bathing water.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
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RE: Can christians here explain Mark 5:2-13?
December 25, 2013 at 4:51 pm
There seems to just be too few details to get a full picture of what's going on.
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