demon possession

• demon possession

138:4.3That night at a sim­ple sup­per at the Al­pheus home, the twin broth­ers were re­ceived into the apos­tolic fam­ily. Later in the evening Je­sus gave his apos­tles their first les­son deal­ing with the ori­gin, na­ture, and des­tiny of un­clean spir­its, but they could not com­pre­hend the im­port of what he told them. They found it very easy to love and ad­mire Je­sus but very dif­fi­cult to un­der­stand many of his teach­ings.

145:2.13This young man was not pos­sessed of an un­clean spirit or de­mon; he was a vic­tim of or­di­nary epilepsy. But he had been taught that his af­flic­tion was due to pos­ses­sion by an evil spirit. He be­lieved this teach­ing and be­haved ac­cord­ingly in all that he thought or said con­cern­ing his ail­ment. The peo­ple all be­lieved that such phe­nom­ena were di­rectly caused by the pres­ence of un­clean spir­its. Ac­cord­ingly they be­lieved that Je­sus had cast a de­mon out of this man. But Je­sus did not at that time cure his epilepsy. Not un­til later on that day, af­ter sun­down, was this man re­ally healed. Long af­ter the day of Pen­te­cost the Apos­tle John, who was the last to write of Je­sus’ do­ings, avoided all ref­er­ence to these so-called acts of “cast­ing out dev­ils,” and this he did in view of the fact that such cases of de­mon pos­ses­sion never oc­curred af­ter Pen­te­cost.

163:6.2When the sev­enty re­lated how “even the dev­ils were sub­ject” to them, they re­ferred to the won­der­ful cures they had wrought in the cases of vic­tims of ner­vous dis­or­ders. Nev­er­the­less, there had been a few cases of real spirit pos­ses­sion re­lieved by these min­is­ters, and re­fer­ring to these, Je­sus said: “It is not strange that these dis­obe­di­ent mi­nor spir­its should be sub­ject to you, see­ing that I be­held Sa­tan falling as light­ning from heaven. But re­joice not so much over this, for I de­clare to you that, as soon as I re­turn to my Fa­ther, we will send forth our spir­its into the very minds of men so that no more can these few lost spir­its en­ter the minds of un­for­tu­nate mor­tals. I re­joice with you that you have power with men, but be not lifted up be­cause of this ex­pe­ri­ence but the rather re­joice that your names are writ­ten on the rolls of heaven, and that you are thus to go for­ward in an end­less ca­reer of spir­i­tual con­quest.”

87:4.7The tragedy of all this lies in the fact that, when these ideas were tak­ing root in the prim­i­tive mind of man, there re­ally were no bad or dishar­mo­nious spir­its in all the world. Such an un­for­tu­nate sit­u­a­tion did not de­velop un­til af­ter the Cali­gas­tic re­bel­lion and only per­sisted un­til Pen­te­cost. The con­cept of good and evil as cos­mic co-or­di­nates is, even in the twen­ti­eth cen­tury, very much alive in hu­man phi­los­o­phy; most of the world’s re­li­gions still carry this cul­tural birth­mark of the long-gone days of the emerg­ing ghost cults.

77:7.6It is no mere fig­ure of speech when the rec­ord states: “And they brought to Him all sorts of sick peo­ple, those who were pos­sessed by dev­ils and those who were lu­natics.” Je­sus knew and rec­og­nized the dif­fer­ence be­tween in­san­ity and de­mo­ni­a­cal pos­ses­sion, al­though these states were greatly con­fused in the minds of those who lived in his day and gen­er­a­tion.

77:7.7Even prior to Pen­te­cost no rebel spirit could dom­i­nate a nor­mal hu­man mind, and since that day even the weak minds of in­fe­rior mor­tals are free from such pos­si­bil­i­ties. The sup­posed cast­ing out of dev­ils since the ar­rival of the Spirit of Truth has been a mat­ter of con­found­ing a be­lief in de­mo­ni­a­cal pos­ses­sion with hys­te­ria, in­san­ity, and fee­ble-mind­ed­ness. But just be­cause Mi­chael’s be­stowal has for­ever lib­er­ated all hu­man minds on Uran­tia from the pos­si­bil­ity of de­mo­ni­a­cal pos­ses­sion, do not imag­ine that such was not a re­al­ity in for­mer ages.

141:4.8Je­sus ex­plained to his apos­tles on sev­eral oc­ca­sions the na­ture, and some­thing con­cern­ing the ori­gin, of these evil spir­its, in that day of­ten also called un­clean spir­its. The Mas­ter well knew the dif­fer­ence be­tween the pos­ses­sion of evil spir­its and in­san­ity, but the apos­tles did not. Nei­ther was it pos­si­ble, in view of their lim­ited knowl­edge of the early his­tory of Uran­tia, for Je­sus to un­der­take to make this mat­ter fully un­der­stand­able. But he many times said to them, al­lud­ing to these evil spir­its: “They shall no more mo­lest men when I shall have as­cended to my Fa­ther in heaven, and af­ter I shall have poured out my spirit upon all flesh in those times when the king­dom will come in great power and spir­i­tual glory.”

145:2.12Just as Je­sus fin­ished speak­ing, a young man in the con­gre­ga­tion who had been much ag­i­tated by his words was seized with a vi­o­lent epilep­tic at­tack and loudly cried out. At the end of the seizure, when re­cov­er­ing con­scious­ness, he spoke in a dreamy state, say­ing: “What have we to do with you, Je­sus of Naz­a­reth? You are the holy one of God; have you come to de­stroy us?” Je­sus bade the peo­ple be quiet and, tak­ing the young man by the hand, said, “Come out of it”—and he was im­me­di­ately awak­ened.

145:2.14As a re­sult of this com­mon­place in­ci­dent the re­port was rapidly spread through Ca­per­naum that Je­sus had cast a de­mon out of a man and mirac­u­lously healed him in the syn­a­gogue at the con­clu­sion of his af­ter­noon ser­mon. The Sab­bath was just the time for the rapid and ef­fec­tive spread­ing of such a startling ru­mor. This re­port was also car­ried to all the smaller set­tle­ments around Ca­per­naum, and many of the peo­ple be­lieved it.

95:6.6The Jew­ish tra­di­tions of heaven and hell and the doc­trine of dev­ils as re­corded in the He­brew scrip­tures, while founded on the lin­ger­ing tra­di­tions of Lu­cifer and Cali­gas­tia, were prin­ci­pally de­rived from the Zoroas­tri­ans dur­ing the times when the Jews were un­der the po­lit­i­cal and cul­tural dom­i­nance of the Per­sians. Zoroaster, like the Egyp­tians, taught the “day of judg­ment,” but he con­nected this event with the end of the world.

53:8.9In gen­eral, when weak and dis­so­lute mor­tals are sup­posed to be un­der the in­flu­ence of dev­ils and demons, they are merely be­ing dom­i­nated by their own in­her­ent and de­based ten­den­cies, be­ing led away by their own nat­u­ral propen­si­ties. The devil has been given a great deal of credit for evil which does not be­long to him. Cali­gas­tia has been com­par­a­tively im­po­tent since the cross of Christ.

90:1.2Since in olden times any­thing ab­nor­mal was as­cribed to spirit pos­ses­sion, any strik­ing men­tal or phys­i­cal ab­nor­mal­ity con­sti­tuted qual­i­fi­ca­tion for be­ing a med­i­cine man. Many of these men were epilep­tic, many of the women hys­teric, and these two types ac­counted for a good deal of an­cient in­spi­ra­tion as well as spirit and devil pos­ses­sion. Quite a few of these ear­li­est of priests were of a class which has since been de­nom­i­nated para­noiac.

158:4.2Al­though the crowd en­gaged in nu­mer­ous ar­gu­ments, the chief con­tro­versy was about a cer­tain cit­i­zen of Tiberias who had ar­rived the pre­ced­ing day in quest of Je­sus. This man, James of Safed, had a son about four­teen years old, an only child, who was severely af­flicted with epilepsy. In ad­di­tion to this ner­vous mal­ady this lad had be­come pos­sessed by one of those wan­der­ing, mis­chievous, and re­bel­lious mid­way­ers who were then pres­ent on earth and un­con­trolled, so that the youth was both epilep­tic and de­mon-pos­sessed.

158:5.1As Je­sus drew near, the nine apos­tles were more than re­lieved to wel­come him, and they were greatly en­cour­aged to be­hold the good cheer and un­usual en­thu­si­asm which marked the coun­te­nances of Pe­ter, James, and John. They all rushed for­ward to greet Je­sus and their three breth­ren. As they ex­changed greet­ings, the crowd came up, and Je­sus asked, “What were you dis­put­ing about as we drew near?” But be­fore the dis­con­certed and hu­mil­i­ated apos­tles could re­ply to the Mas­ter’s ques­tion, the anx­ious fa­ther of the af­flicted lad stepped for­ward and, kneel­ing at Je­sus’ feet, said: “Mas­ter, I have a son, an only child, who is pos­sessed by an evil spirit. Not only does he cry out in ter­ror, foam at the mouth, and fall like a dead per­son at the time of seizure, but of­ten­times this evil spirit which pos­sesses him rends him in con­vul­sions and some­times has cast him into the wa­ter and even into the fire. With much grind­ing of teeth and as a re­sult of many bruises, my child wastes away. His life is worse than death; his mother and I are of a sad heart and a bro­ken spirit. About noon yes­ter­day, seek­ing for you, I caught up with your dis­ci­ples, and while we were wait­ing, your apos­tles sought to cast out this de­mon, but they could not do it. And now, Mas­ter, will you do this for us, will you heal my son?”

158:5.2When Je­sus had lis­tened to this recital, he touched the kneel­ing fa­ther and bade him rise while he gave the near-by apos­tles a search­ing sur­vey. Then said Je­sus to all those who stood be­fore him: “O faith­less and per­verse gen­er­a­tion, how long shall I bear with you? How long shall I be with you? How long ere you learn that the works of faith come not forth at the bid­ding of doubt­ing un­be­lief?” And then, point­ing to the be­wil­dered fa­ther, Je­sus said, “Bring hither your son.” And when James had brought the lad be­fore Je­sus, he asked, “How long has the boy been af­flicted in this way?” The fa­ther an­swered, “Since he was a very young child.” And as they talked, the youth was seized with a vi­o­lent at­tack and fell in their midst, gnash­ing his teeth and foam­ing at the mouth. Af­ter a suc­ces­sion of vi­o­lent con­vul­sions he lay there be­fore them as one dead. Now did the fa­ther again kneel at Je­sus’ feet while he im­plored the Mas­ter, say­ing: “If you can cure him, I be­seech you to have com­pas­sion on us and de­liver us from this af­flic­tion.” And when Je­sus heard these words, he looked down into the fa­ther’s anx­ious face, say­ing: “Ques­tion not my Fa­ther’s power of love, only the sin­cer­ity and reach of your faith. All things are pos­si­ble to him who re­ally be­lieves.” And then James of Safed spoke those long-to-be-re­mem­bered words of com­min­gled faith and doubt, “Lord, I be­lieve. I pray you help my un­be­lief.”

158:5.3When Je­sus heard these words, he stepped for­ward and, tak­ing the lad by the hand, said: “I will do this in ac­cor­dance with my Fa­ther’s will and in honor of liv­ing faith. My son, arise! Come out of him, dis­obe­di­ent spirit, and go not back into him.” And plac­ing the hand of the lad in the hand of the fa­ther, Je­sus said: “Go your way. The Fa­ther has granted the de­sire of your soul.” And all who were pres­ent, even the en­e­mies of Je­sus, were as­ton­ished at what they saw.

158:5.4It was in­deed a dis­il­lu­sion­ment for the three apos­tles who had so re­cently en­joyed the spir­i­tual ec­stasy of the scenes and ex­pe­ri­ences of the trans­fig­u­ra­tion, so soon to re­turn to this scene of the de­feat and dis­com­fi­ture of their fel­low apos­tles. But it was ever so with these twelve am­bas­sadors of the king­dom. They never failed to al­ter­nate be­tween ex­al­ta­tion and hu­mil­i­a­tion in their life ex­pe­ri­ences.

158:5.5This was a true heal­ing of a dou­ble af­flic­tion, a phys­i­cal ail­ment and a spirit mal­ady. And the lad was per­ma­nently cured from that hour. When James had de­parted with his re­stored son, Je­sus said: “We go now to Cae­sarea-Phi­lippi; make ready at once.” And they were a quiet group as they jour­neyed south­ward while the crowd fol­lowed on be­hind.

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.

53:8.7Be­fore the be­stowal of Mi­chael these rulers of dark­ness sought to main­tain their au­thor­ity on Uran­tia, and they per­sis­tently with­stood the mi­nor and sub­or­di­nate ce­les­tial per­son­al­i­ties. But since the day of Pen­te­cost this traitorous Cali­gas­tia and his equally con­temptible as­so­ciate, Dali­gas­tia, are servile be­fore the di­vine majesty of the Par­a­dise Thought Ad­justers and the pro­tec­tive Spirit of Truth, the spirit of Mi­chael, which has been poured out upon all flesh.

77:7.4These dis­loyal mid­way­ers were able to re­veal them­selves to mor­tal eyes un­der cer­tain cir­cum­stances, and es­pe­cially was this true of the as­so­ciates of Beelze­bub, the leader of the apos­tate sec­ondary mid­way­ers. But these unique crea­tures must not be con­fused with cer­tain of the rebel cheru­bim and ser­a­phim who also were on earth up to the time of Christ’s death and res­ur­rec­tion. Some of the older writ­ers des­ig­nated these re­bel­lious mid­way crea­tures as evil spir­its and demons, and the apos­tate ser­a­phim as evil an­gels.

77:7.5On no world can evil spir­its pos­sess any mor­tal mind sub­se­quent to the life of a Par­a­dise be­stowal Son. But be­fore the days of Christ Mi­chael on Uran­tia—be­fore the uni­ver­sal com­ing of the Thought Ad­justers and the pour­ing out of the Mas­ter’s spirit upon all flesh—these rebel mid­way­ers were ac­tu­ally able to in­flu­ence the minds of cer­tain in­fe­rior mor­tals and some­what to con­trol their ac­tions. This was ac­com­plished in much the same way as the loyal mid­way crea­tures func­tion when they serve as ef­fi­cient con­tact guard­i­ans of the hu­man minds of the Uran­tia re­serve corps of des­tiny at those times when the Ad­juster is, in ef­fect, de­tached from the per­son­al­ity dur­ing a sea­son of con­tact with super­hu­man in­tel­li­gences.

77:7.8The en­tire group of rebel mid­way­ers is at pres­ent held pris­oner by or­der of the Most Highs of Eden­tia. No more do they roam this world on mis­chief bent. Re­gard­less of the pres­ence of the Thought Ad­justers, the pour­ing out of the Spirit of Truth upon all flesh for­ever made it im­pos­si­ble for dis­loyal spir­its of any sort or de­scrip­tion ever again to in­vade even the most fee­ble of hu­man minds. Since the day of Pen­te­cost there never again can be such a thing as de­mo­ni­a­cal pos­ses­sion.

141:4.4At this same time Je­sus be­gan to teach the twelve more fully con­cern­ing their mis­sion “to com­fort the af­flicted and min­is­ter to the sick.” The Mas­ter taught them much about the whole man—the union of body, mind, and spirit to form the in­di­vid­ual man or woman. Je­sus told his as­so­ciates about the three forms of af­flic­tion they would meet and went on to ex­plain how they should min­is­ter to all who suf­fer the sor­rows of hu­man sick­ness. He taught them to rec­og­nize:

141:4.51. Dis­eases of the flesh—those af­flic­tions com­monly re­garded as phys­i­cal sick­ness.

141:4.62. Trou­bled minds—those non­phys­i­cal af­flic­tions which were sub­se­quently looked upon as emo­tional and men­tal dif­fi­cul­ties and dis­tur­bances.

141:4.73. The pos­ses­sion of evil spir­its.

146:7.1At En­dor Je­sus es­caped for a few days from the clam­or­ing mul­ti­tudes in quest of phys­i­cal heal­ing. Dur­ing their so­journ at this place the Mas­ter re­counted for the in­struc­tion of the apos­tles the story of King Saul and the witch of En­dor. Je­sus plainly told his apos­tles that the stray and re­bel­lious mid­way­ers who had of­ten­times im­per­son­ated the sup­posed spir­its of the dead would soon be brought un­der con­trol so that they could no more do these strange things. He told his fol­low­ers that, af­ter he re­turned to the Fa­ther, and af­ter they had poured out their spirit upon all flesh, no more could such semispirit be­ings—so-called un­clean spir­its—pos­sess the fee­ble- and evil-minded among mor­tals.

53:8.6The last act of Mi­chael be­fore leav­ing Uran­tia was to of­fer mercy to Cali­gas­tia and Dali­gas­tia, but they spurned his ten­der prof­fer. Cali­gas­tia, your apos­tate Plan­e­tary Prince, is still free on Uran­tia to pros­e­cute his ne­far­i­ous de­signs, but he has ab­so­lutely no power to en­ter the minds of men, nei­ther can he draw near to their souls to tempt or cor­rupt them un­less they re­ally de­sire to be cursed with his wicked pres­ence.

53:8.8But even so, no fallen spirit ever did have the power to in­vade the minds or to ha­rass the souls of the chil­dren of God. Nei­ther Sa­tan nor Cali­gas­tia could ever touch or ap­proach the faith sons of God; faith is an ef­fec­tive ar­mor against sin and in­iq­uity. It is true: “He who is born of God keeps him­self, and the wicked one touches him not.”

156:1.1There lived near the home of Karuska, where the Mas­ter lodged, a Syr­ian woman who had heard much of Je­sus as a great healer and teacher, and on this Sab­bath af­ter­noon she came over, bring­ing her lit­tle daugh­ter. The child, about twelve years old, was af­flicted with a griev­ous ner­vous dis­or­der char­ac­ter­ized by con­vul­sions and other dis­tress­ing man­i­fes­ta­tions.

156:1.2Je­sus had charged his as­so­ciates to tell no one of his pres­ence at the home of Karuska, ex­plain­ing that he de­sired to have a rest. While they had obeyed their Mas­ter’s in­struc­tions, the ser­vant of Karuska had gone over to the house of this Syr­ian woman, No­rana, to in­form her that Je­sus lodged at the home of her mis­tress and had urged this anx­ious mother to bring her af­flicted daugh­ter for heal­ing. This mother, of course, be­lieved that her child was pos­sessed by a de­mon, an un­clean spirit.

156:1.3When No­rana ar­rived with her daugh­ter, the Al­pheus twins ex­plained through an in­ter­preter that the Mas­ter was rest­ing and could not be dis­turbed; where­upon No­rana replied that she and the child would re­main right there un­til the Mas­ter had fin­ished his rest. Pe­ter also en­deav­ored to rea­son with her and to per­suade her to go home. He ex­plained that Je­sus was weary with much teach­ing and heal­ing, and that he had come to Phoeni­cia for a pe­riod of quiet and rest. But it was fu­tile; No­rana would not leave. To Pe­ter’s en­treaties she replied only: “I will not de­part un­til I have seen your Mas­ter. I know he can cast the de­mon out of my child, and I will not go un­til the healer has looked upon my daugh­ter.”

156:1.4Then Thomas sought to send the woman away but met only with fail­ure. To him she said: “I have faith that your Mas­ter can cast out this de­mon which tor­ments my child. I have heard of his mighty works in Gal­i­lee, and I be­lieve in him. What has hap­pened to you, his dis­ci­ples, that you would send away those who come seek­ing your Mas­ter’s help?” And when she had thus spo­ken, Thomas with­drew.

156:1.5Then came for­ward Si­mon Ze­lo­tes to re­mon­strate with No­rana. Said Si­mon: “Woman, you are a Greek-speak­ing gen­tile. It is not right that you should ex­pect the Mas­ter to take the bread in­tended for the chil­dren of the fa­vored house­hold and cast it to the dogs.” But No­rana re­fused to take of­fense at Si­mon’s thrust. She replied only: “Yes, teacher, I un­der­stand your words. I am only a dog in the eyes of the Jews, but as con­cerns your Mas­ter, I am a be­liev­ing dog. I am de­ter­mined that he shall see my daugh­ter, for I am per­suaded that, if he shall but look upon her, he will heal her. And even you, my good man, would not dare to de­prive the dogs of the priv­i­lege of ob­tain­ing the crumbs which chance to fall from the chil­dren’s ta­ble.”

156:1.6At just this time the lit­tle girl was seized with a vi­o­lent con­vul­sion be­fore them all, and the mother cried out: “There, you can see that my child is pos­sessed by an evil spirit. If our need does not im­press you, it would ap­peal to your Mas­ter, who I have been told loves all men and dares even to heal the gen­tiles when they be­lieve. You are not wor­thy to be his dis­ci­ples. I will not go un­til my child has been cured.”

156:1.7Je­sus, who had heard all of this con­ver­sa­tion through an open win­dow, now came out­side, much to their sur­prise, and said: “O woman, great is your faith, so great that I can­not with­hold that which you de­sire; go your way in peace. Your daugh­ter al­ready has been made whole.” And the lit­tle girl was well from that hour. As No­rana and the child took leave, Je­sus en­treated them to tell no one of this oc­cur­rence; and while his as­so­ciates did com­ply with this re­quest, the mother and the child ceased not to pro­claim the fact of the lit­tle girl’s heal­ing through­out all the coun­try­side and even in Sidon, so much so that Je­sus found it ad­vis­able to change his lodg­ings within a few days.

156:1.8The next day, as Je­sus taught his apos­tles, com­ment­ing on the cure of the daugh­ter of the Syr­ian woman, he said: “And so it has been all the way along; you see for your­selves how the gen­tiles are able to ex­er­cise sav­ing faith in the teach­ings of the gospel of the king­dom of heaven. Ver­ily, ver­ily, I tell you that the Fa­ther’s king­dom shall be taken by the gen­tiles if the chil­dren of Abra­ham are not minded to show faith enough to en­ter therein.”

51:3.7The sec­ondary mid­way­ers should not be con­fused with the pri­mary or­der, who date from the near times of the ar­rival of the Plan­e­tary Prince. On Uran­tia a ma­jor­ity of these ear­lier mid­way crea­tures went into re­bel­lion with Cali­gas­tia and have, since Pen­te­cost, been in­terned. Many of the Adamic group who did not re­main loyal to the plan­e­tary ad­min­is­tra­tion are like­wise in­terned.

151:6.6As the swine herders rushed into the vil­lage to spread the news of the tam­ing of the lu­natic, the dogs charged upon a small and un­tended herd of about thirty swine and drove most of them over a precipice into the sea. And it was this in­ci­den­tal oc­cur­rence, in con­nec­tion with the pres­ence of Je­sus and the sup­posed mirac­u­lous cur­ing of the lu­natic, that gave ori­gin to the leg­end that Je­sus had cured Amos by cast­ing a le­gion of dev­ils out of him, and that these dev­ils had en­tered into the herd of swine, caus­ing them forth­with to rush head­long to their de­struc­tion in the sea be­low. Be­fore the day was over, this episode was pub­lished abroad by the swine ten­ders, and the whole vil­lage be­lieved it. Amos most cer­tainly be­lieved this story; he saw the swine tum­bling over the brow of the hill shortly af­ter his trou­bled mind had qui­eted down, and he al­ways be­lieved that they car­ried with them the very evil spir­its which had so long tor­mented and af­flicted him. And this had a good deal to do with the per­ma­nency of his cure. It is equally true that all of Je­sus’ apos­tles (save Thomas) be­lieved that the episode of the swine was di­rectly con­nected with the cure of Amos.

121:7.12The Med­i­ter­ra­nean Ro­man Em­pire, the Parthian king­dom, and the ad­ja­cent peo­ples of Je­sus’ time all held crude and prim­i­tive ideas re­gard­ing the ge­og­ra­phy of the world, as­tron­omy, health, and dis­ease; and nat­u­rally they were amazed by the new and startling pro­nounce­ments of the car­pen­ter of Naz­a­reth. The ideas of spirit pos­ses­sion, good and bad, ap­plied not merely to hu­man be­ings, but ev­ery rock and tree was viewed by many as be­ing spirit pos­sessed. This was an en­chanted age, and ev­ery­body be­lieved in mir­a­cles as com­mon­place oc­cur­rences.

148:2.3El­man and his as­so­ciates en­deav­ored to teach the truth to these sick ones con­cern­ing the “pos­ses­sion of evil spir­its,” but they met with lit­tle suc­cess. The be­lief that phys­i­cal sick­ness and men­tal de­range­ment could be caused by the dwell­ing of a so-called un­clean spirit in the mind or body of the af­flicted per­son was well-nigh uni­ver­sal.