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The Man with a Legion of Devils

I speak today to those whose lives are out of control or are broken seemingly beyond repair. If you are depressed and understand despair, there is reason for hope, and a way for your agency to be reclaimed and restored. Please consider the following story.

During the Savior’s Galilean ministry He crossed over the Lake of Chinnereth to an area called Gadara. As soon as He had set foot on land, a man, if you want to call him such, saw him from a distance and came running towards him yelling. The man wore no clothes and lived among the dead in the tombs, where he was heard night and day crying like a wounded animal and cutting himself with stones. He was a creature of torment, a wild man so “exceedingly fierce…that no man could pass that way.”

The people were terrified of him. Numerous attempts had been made to bind him and tame him but all had failed. The man had superhuman strength. “Chains had been plucked asunder by him and…fetters broken in pieces.” He was more a monster than a man, lost and forsaken by helpless humanity.

We do not know what brought him to that wretched condition, but we do know that he suffered a fate worse than death. His body was his prison cohabited by a legion of devils. He had little if any control over it. His mind was surcharged with misery and torment. Agency was all but suspended for him. His life was out of control and his very existence was an agony. Seemingly, death would have been preferable.

Jesus came and cast the evil spirits out of the man. We are all familiar with the story of the devils entering into the swine, and the swine running off the cliffs into the sea and drowning. The townspeople came out to investigate the excited claims of those who had tended the pigs.

It has always intrigued me that it was not the sight of 2000 dead pigs floating lifeless in the Sea of Galilee that most bothered them, but, rather, when “they came to Jesus and saw him that was possessed with the devil…sitting and clothed and in his right mind: they were afraid.”

So radical and complete had been the change in the man that he frightened them. Evidently, they considered him so far gone as to be beyond human redemption. It would have taken a power they did not comprehend to restore him and now, having seen that power, they were afraid of it and wanted it to leave. They cast Jesus out of their country.

But the story does not end there. The healed man asked Jesus as He departed if he could come with him, but the Lord responded by saying, “return to thine own house, and show how great things God hath done unto thee.”

“He departed, and began to publish in Decapolis how great things Jesus had done for him: and all that heard him did marvel.” The man became a powerful missionary in the gentile region of Ten Cities called Decapolis. For all that he was lost and forsaken, the Lord reclaimed him, restored him, and empowered him.

I consider this is one of Christ’s greatest mortal miracles. The Master was not just healing an illness or infirmity. He was not restoring life to a dead body, as awesome as that is. He was redeeming a man body, mind, and soul.

When our bad choices have cost us our agency and bound us to irrevocable consequences, when we have thrown our lives away through foolishness and now are controlled by others, it is Christ who knows the way and is the way to restore our agency and give us back our lost lives. There is power in His word.

President Boyd K. Packer recently said, “Christ is the Creator, the healer. What He made, He can fix.”

Verily it is true!

God be thanked for the gift of His Son, Jesus Christ, who because he loves us perfectly, can heal us completely, change us totally, and make us whole when no one else can. “Considering the incomprehensible cost of the crucifixion and atonement….He is not going to turn His back on us now” Therefore,

“Come unto Christ all ye that labor and are heavy laden…”

Sources:

Marrhew 8:28; 11:28

Mark 5:4, 15, 20

Luke 8:39

LDS Conference Report, April 2006

Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, LDS Conference Report, April 2006