The Crisis at Capernaum

153:4.1In the midst of the dis­cus­sions of this af­ter meet­ing, one of the Phar­isees from Je­ru­sa­lem brought to Je­sus a dis­traught youth who was pos­sessed of an un­ruly and re­bel­lious spirit. Lead­ing this de­mented lad up to Je­sus, he said: “What can you do for such af­flic­tion as this? Can you cast out dev­ils?” And when the Mas­ter looked upon the youth, he was moved with com­pas­sion and, beck­on­ing for the lad to come to him, took him by the hand and said: “You know who I am; come out of him; and I charge one of your loyal fel­lows to see that you do not re­turn.” And im­me­di­ately the lad was nor­mal and in his right mind. And this is the first case where Je­sus re­ally cast an “evil spirit” out of a hu­man be­ing. All of the pre­vi­ous cases were only sup­posed pos­ses­sion of the devil; but this was a gen­uine case of de­mo­niac pos­ses­sion, even such as some­times oc­curred in those days and right up to the day of Pen­te­cost, when the Mas­ter’s spirit was poured out upon all flesh, mak­ing it for­ever im­pos­si­ble for these few ce­les­tial rebels to take such ad­van­tage of cer­tain un­sta­ble types of hu­man be­ings.

153:4.2When the peo­ple mar­veled, one of the Phar­isees stood up and charged that Je­sus could do these things be­cause he was in league with dev­ils; that he ad­mit­ted in the lan­guage which he em­ployed in cast­ing out this devil that they were known to each other; and he went on to state that the re­li­gious teach­ers and lead­ers at Je­ru­sa­lem had de­cided that Je­sus did all his so-called mir­a­cles by the power of Beelze­bub, the prince of dev­ils. Said the Phar­isee: “Have noth­ing to do with this man; he is in part­ner­ship with Sa­tan.”

153:4.3Then said Je­sus: “How can Sa­tan cast out Sa­tan? A king­dom di­vided against it­self can­not stand; if a house be di­vided against it­self, it is soon brought to des­o­la­tion. Can a city with­stand a siege if it is not united? If Sa­tan casts out Sa­tan, he is di­vided against him­self; how then shall his king­dom stand? But you should know that no one can en­ter into the house of a strong man and de­spoil his goods ex­cept he first over­power and bind that strong man. And so, if I by the power of Beelze­bub cast out dev­ils, by whom do your sons cast them out? There­fore shall they be your judges. But if I, by the spirit of God, cast out dev­ils, then has the king­dom of God truly come upon you. If you were not blinded by prej­u­dice and mis­led by fear and pride, you would eas­ily per­ceive that one who is greater than dev­ils stands in your midst. You com­pel me to de­clare that he who is not with me is against me, while he who gath­ers not with me scat­ters abroad. Let me ut­ter a solemn warn­ing to you who would pre­sume, with your eyes open and with pre­med­i­tated mal­ice, know­ingly to as­cribe the works of God to the do­ings of dev­ils! Ver­ily, ver­ily, I say to you, all your sins shall be for­given, even all of your blas­phemies, but whoso­ever shall blas­pheme against God with de­lib­er­a­tion and wicked in­ten­tion shall never ob­tain for­give­ness. Since such per­sis­tent work­ers of in­iq­uity will never seek nor re­ceive for­give­ness, they are guilty of the sin of eter­nally re­ject­ing di­vine for­give­ness.

153:4.4“Many of you have this day come to the part­ing of the ways; you have come to a be­gin­ning of the mak­ing of the in­ev­i­ta­ble choice be­tween the will of the Fa­ther and the self-cho­sen ways of dark­ness. And as you now choose, so shall you even­tu­ally be. You must ei­ther make the tree good and its fruit good, or else will the tree be­come cor­rupt and its fruit cor­rupt. I de­clare that in my Fa­ther’s eter­nal king­dom the tree is known by its fruits. But some of you who are as vipers, how can you, hav­ing al­ready cho­sen evil, bring forth good fruits? Af­ter all, out of the abun­dance of the evil in your hearts your mouths speak.”

153:4.5Then stood up an­other Phar­isee, who said: “Teacher, we would have you give us a pre­de­ter­mined sign which we will agree upon as es­tab­lish­ing your au­thor­ity and right to teach. Will you agree to such an ar­range­ment?” And when Je­sus heard this, he said: “This faith­less and sign-seek­ing gen­er­a­tion seeks a to­ken, but no sign shall be given you other than that which you al­ready have, and that which you shall see when the Son of Man de­parts from among you.”

153:4.6And when he had fin­ished speak­ing, his apos­tles sur­rounded him and led him from the syn­a­gogue. In si­lence they jour­neyed home with him to Beth­saida. They were all amazed and some­what ter­ror-stricken by the sud­den change in the Mas­ter’s teach­ing tac­tics. They were wholly un­ac­cus­tomed to see­ing him per­form in such a mil­i­tant man­ner.