epileptics

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.

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.

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.

158:5.5This 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.

88:1.9Hunch­backed and crip­pled chil­dren were re­garded as fe­tishes; lu­natics were be­lieved to be moon-struck. Prim­i­tive man could not dis­tin­guish be­tween ge­nius and in­san­ity; id­iots were ei­ther beaten to death or revered as fe­tish per­son­al­i­ties. Hys­te­ria in­creas­ingly con­firmed the pop­u­lar be­lief in witch­craft; epilep­tics of­ten were priests and med­i­cine men. Drunk­en­ness was looked upon as a form of spirit pos­ses­sion; when a sav­age went on a spree, he put a leaf in his hair for the pur­pose of dis­avow­ing re­spon­si­bil­ity for his acts. Poi­sons and in­tox­i­cants be­came fe­tishes; they were deemed to be pos­sessed.

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.

85:6.2Early man re­garded all un­usual per­sons as super­hu­man, and he so feared such be­ings as to hold them in rev­er­en­tial awe; to some de­gree he lit­er­ally wor­shiped them. Even hav­ing twins was re­garded as be­ing ei­ther very lucky or very un­lucky. Lu­natics, epilep­tics, and the fee­ble-minded were of­ten wor­shiped by their nor­mal-minded fel­lows, who be­lieved that such ab­nor­mal be­ings were in­dwelt by the gods. Priests, kings, and proph­ets were wor­shiped; the holy men of old were looked upon as in­spired by the de­i­ties.