Light on the Hill

Guest (Female): Pastor James describes the protection available in Christ as we navigate through the spiritual world.

James Kaddis: I've already said that this world is very real. But the one thing that I should point out is that there is no way around this world. You must walk through it. And there's no way to have victory walking through it unless you have the only one in which this whole world is subject to.

You cannot defeat the spiritual world that you cannot see if you are not subject to the same person that the spiritual world is subject to. Unless you walk in full and total submission and obedience to the God of heaven, you cannot be the one who experiences the benefit of his protection.

Guest (Male): Our verse by verse study through the Gospel of Mark continues right now on Light on the Hill. We're glad you could join us today. On this weekend edition, Pastor James Kaddis will be in the fifth chapter of Mark and has us consider the remarkable power of Jesus. It's here that we read about a demon-possessed man who had incredible strength, so strong that not even shackles could subdue him. It looked to be a hopeless situation until he came into contact with Jesus and everything changed. Here's Pastor James with more.

James Kaddis: Let's look at this. It says, "And when he was come out of the ship," notice this, "immediately there met him out of the tombs," the tombs folks, the place where the dead lay, "out of the tombs a man with an unclean spirit," demonic possessed man. Can you imagine? You get off the boat and the moment you get off the boat demons are coming your way? It's an interesting thought.

Verse three, "who had his dwelling among the tombs and no man could bind him, no, not with chains because that he had been often bound with fetters and chains and the chains had been plucked asunder by him and the fetters broken in pieces, neither could any man tame him. And always night and day, he was in the mountains and in the tombs crying and cutting himself with stones."

It's very interesting. I would never believe this story had I not heard it from different people who were there at different times and the accounts were almost exactly the same. But I remember one of the very first stories I ever heard of a demon-possessed person throwing guys around like a ragdoll was an interesting story of Raul Ries with a group of pastors who were up in the mountains who there were people that were living in the local area there that ran into the center while the pastors were meeting and said, I believe it was their daughter was demon-possessed and they needed help in dealing with her.

And so Raul Ries, Jeff Johnson, I think it was Mike McIntosh, Pastor Chuck and a few others walked into that room where that demon-possessed person was. And the story the way I heard about it, the one feature that I continued to be reminded of when I heard that story is that the demon-possessed girl threw Raul Ries around like he was literally a Raggedy Ann doll. Picked him up and threw him around like he was nothing.

By the way, for those of you that have to understand how extraordinary of a picture that is, and probably Raul's going to kill me if he hears that I said this and it catches wind that I was talking about him this way, just so that you understand how dangerous of a man Raul Ries is. First of all, he loves the Lord, that's not the dangerous part of him. But the man is a 10th level master in San Soo.

If you guys want to understand something about Raul, Raul did a bunch of weaponless defense training for sheriff's deputies for many, many years. The way that came about was he was on a ride-along. And in the ride-along the deputy that was with him, I believe this was Temple Station at the time, I don't remember, it was LA County Sheriff's Department. He's on a ride-along and on the ride-along the deputy goes out to confront somebody who's a very aggressive man and a pretty good fighter.

And the deputy's about to lose his life. He tells Raul to sit in the front seat. And so Raul does exactly what he's told to do. And when he realizes that the deputy is in trouble and that this guy's about to take the deputy's gun and take his life, Raul goes out there, subdues him, and in the process, I think broke something like 12 bones in the guy's body while taking him into custody. Not knowing what he did, he just did what he normally does.

And everybody was shocked and astounded and they realized how tough the guy is and so on and so forth. So he's done a lot of training and he still does a lot of that stuff, plays around with swords and all kinds of, I don't think he does a much of that stuff anymore. But I bring that up just to point out that a guy who has more toughness in his little pinky than probably most of us put together could walk into a room with a little demon-possessed girl and get thrown around like a Raggedy Ann doll.

That speaks of extraordinary powerful strength. Funny thing is this, when you run into people that tell you that they combat demons all the time, and they rebuke them in the name of Jesus and they fought together and all that, all a lie. Look, I'm telling you this right now, coming across one demon is scary enough. What Jesus is dealing with here is thousands of demons. Not just one.

But the one thing that I want to point out is this, let me remind you of this. Many demons are regarded as fallen angels. They're fallen angels. One angel, one, overnight took the lives of 185,000 elite soldiers. One, according to the Bible. One angel. So let's not underestimate the power of these creatures. They're significantly powerful.

I'm not saying this to scare you guys because greater is he who lives in us than he who lives in the world. I want to point that out. I think it's really important to point that out. But Jesus is coming across something that is not capable of being handled by human power. I also should point this out. He didn't just get there out of the blue.

This demon-possessed man didn't get there out of the blue. My guess is he ended up where he was through a long series of a bunch of things being done over time. Nobody wakes up in the morning and says, by the end of the night, I'd like to become a crack addict, or I'd like to cheat on my wife with a prostitute. People don't do that. People don't wake up in the morning and say I just want to throw my life away today.

It never works out that way. It's always one little compromise, and then another little one, and then another little one, and by the time you've got a thousand of those little compromises under your belt, then you wake up the next morning and realize, wow, where am I? I didn't realize I got here. That's how it works. It's important that we point that out here.

So look at this. "But when he saw Jesus afar off, he ran and worshipped him and cried with a loud voice and said, what have I to do with thee Jesus, thou Son of the most high God? I adjure thee by God that thou torment me not." Now what was he talking about? Well first of all, you recognize here that Jesus Christ is the ultimate authority. He's the creator of the universe. We get that.

When he sees the Lord, he recognizes who he is. And what I believe is going on is he's basically begging the Lord to not put him in the abyss. These demons are begging the Lord to not put them in the place where they're going to experience torment forever. Remember how we always talk about the fact that you hear these guys that say I don't care if I go to hell, I'll just party with the devil. No you won't.

You'll be alone and you'll be tormented forever. These demons are hoping not to be able to be in that situation. They're worshipping him and begging him, the same ones that are throwing everybody else around, that own the area, they see Jesus and they run to him, bow themselves before him and beg him not to destroy them. Interesting, isn't it? Here's one question that I would ask, why in the world would God not just say, no, sorry, y'all going to hell, bye?

That's what I'm thinking in my mind. Why wouldn't he do that? We'll find out. It's an interesting point that he makes. I think it's one that should be very real and very valid for us all and something that we should all run away with because it's super critical. For he said unto them, notice this, verse eight, "Come out of the man, thou unclean spirit." And he asked him, "What is thy name?" and he answered saying, "My name is Legion, for we are many."

Not just one demon, okay? There's a whole bunch of demons here. Let me just point this out because I do think it's worthwhile mentioning. And that is this, I've already said that this world is very real. But the one thing that I should point out is that there is no way around this world. You must walk through it. And there's no way to have victory walking through it unless you have the only one in which this whole world is subject to.

You cannot defeat the spiritual world that you cannot see if you are not subject to the same person that the spiritual world is subject to. Unless you walk in full and total submission and obedience to the God of heaven, you cannot be the one who experiences the benefit of his protection. This is something that we are constantly trying to drill within the mind and the heart of our own children.

I hate doing it. But when my child disobeys me, I treat it as the ultimate crime. And when my child disobeys me, there is no reward. You don't get to do things. And it doesn't matter if that means you don't get to do things for months on end. I really don't care. I do what I do because I care about you because the problem is this, as your father, I am called by God to protect you as my children.

That's what God has called me to do. The problem is I can't protect you if I can't teach you to be obedient to me. I had a conversation about this with my wife recently. And she gets it. She doesn't get it experientially because she has, by God's grace, not seen what I've seen. But she gets it based on understanding the issue. And that is we are huge, huge on our kids immediately responding to us.

When we tell them to stop something or when we tell them to come here, if they don't come to us immediately or they do not stop when they're told to stop something, there are significant consequences that we will bear down upon them. They will experience significant consequences. It doesn't matter what the excuse is. If I ask you to come to me or stop going where you're going, at all costs, you will do exactly what I tell you.

I can't sit down and explain to my kids that 25 years before they were born, I on a regular basis stood over two-year-old bodies or three-year-old bodies of children that were run over in the streets. Because when they chose to run a specific direction and their mom and their dad called them and said please stop, please stop, they didn't.

And because of their disobedience, they ran outside of the ability that their parents afforded them to protect them and they ended up in a very difficult situation. Now obviously, I think that there is a responsibility on the part of parents to know that there is a distinct scenario that could happen where your kids are disobedient and as a result, you still need to anticipate that, right?

If I were to call my wife tonight and I were to say honey can you move the position of the car in the driveway even though we have a driveway is protected, kids can't just run outside the gate, she would still have to put all the kids in the car. They're all of tender age. She can't tell the kids wait in the house while I move the car. Because God forbid that one of the kids would run outside and if they run outside and she doesn't see them, we have a problem.

You understand what I'm saying? So there's an obligation on both sides. But the problem is this, I can't expect God to protect me if I'm not learning how to be submissive to him. This man who is demon possessed, at some point, at some moment, he chose not to walk according to God's word and he subjected himself to the destructive effect of what happens when that doesn't take place. You understand what I mean when I say that?

If you want to learn how to be able to navigate through the spiritual world that you are very, very susceptible to, the easiest and fastest way to navigate through it and to be okay, to be fine, to do well, to not only be a conqueror but more than a conqueror, is to navigate it through your obedience. Is to walk according to the instruction provided to you by the word of God and live as such.

Do not allow yourself to walk in a place where you choose to disobey God, even if it's on a small level. Because one small act of disobedience could create permanent and serious consequences. Makes sense? Verse 10, "And he besought him much that he would not send them away out of the country. Now there was there nigh unto the mountains a great herd of swine feeding. And the devils besought him saying, send us into the swine that we may enter into them."

Okay, there's a couple of very interesting dynamics that's going on here because the first question that you might ask is why would Jesus not just simply put them into the abyss? Why wouldn't that be the case? Well, there's a lot to this. The first thing I'll simply say is that God is sovereign and we're not. So being able to understand his methods or being able to understand why he does the things that he does is something that's a broken pursuit.

We're never going to be able to understand that. Now it is important to try to get to know the mind of Christ. And it is important to be able to understand what his mind is by walking in obedience to him because as we walk in obedience, our minds are enlightened, our hearts are opened, we're able to see the clarity become substantially greater when we're doing those things.

And so that in and of itself is something that is a remarkable opportunity to be able to understand God a little bit more. But in this particular context, I believe that the reason why Jesus refrained from sending them to the abyss was because there was a greater message that he wanted us to see here. There was a more significant purpose that he had. There was something very important that we needed to learn from the moment.

You see, the demons asked that they be cast into the swine. Now why would the demons ask? Because they knew that that was very likely the only place that Jesus would allow them to go into. There's a running theory, by the way, for anybody who studies angiology or demonology, it's a very interesting study in the Bible, that when demons possess a body, when they leave that body they want to go to something else.

They want to go into something else. And that's probably very true, there's a lot of truth to that. There's other areas in the scripture that would seem to indicate that to us. But here's the thing that's really interesting. They want to go into the pigs. Why do they want to go into the pigs? What were the Gadarenes known for doing? The Gadarenes were known for raising pigs. They were pig farmers.

You say, okay big deal, they make my bacon. That's good. Well besides the fact that pigs are pretty disgusting animals, the only thing they're pretty good for is bacon, but let's just put that aside. Pigs were unlawful. God said that it was against his law to not only eat pigs, but to raise them, to touch them. You couldn't be around them, they were considered to be unclean animals.

Now we know now as we look back on it that God had a real reason for doing that because these animals that we call unclean or that God called unclean had a substantial effect on people. As a matter of fact, up until recently, we didn't know this until about maybe 60 or 70 years ago, if you ate pork that was not cooked completely correctly, you got worms in your system. Like literally.

And people never even knew that. We didn't really understand that until they started getting better at autopsies and beginning to make connections between the diets of people and so forth things. I mean it's kind of gross when you think about it. And then I don't want to get into all the ugliness about pigs. Because we're in a Bible study and you probably didn't come to get something that'll cause you to vomit on your way out.

But let me just tell you this, they're disgusting animals. They're super, super disgusting animals on a whole bunch of levels. Don't be deceived by the Charlotte's Web book that you might read, or the little cute little piglets that you see when you go to the fair or something like that. They are absolutely disgusting animals and it was unlawful.

In other words, God said no, you cannot do it. But guess what? These people did it. Again, you do things God's way you get God's protection. You don't do things God's way you open yourself up to a lot and a lot of bad. So look at this. This is very important. Verse 13, "And forthwith," that means quickly, "Jesus gave them leave." In other words, go, you can go do it.

"And the unclean spirits went out and entered into the swine." I think Jesus knew what they would do. I think Jesus knew what was going to happen next. "And the herd ran violently down a steep place into the sea and they were about 2,000 and were choked in the sea." So if you assume that a single demon entered into each and every single one of those pigs, there's at least 2,000 demons that was inside that man.

That left from that man, ran into that herd of pigs and those pigs killed themselves. By the way, we could spend a lot of time studying the behaviors of demons and looking at this as a prime indicator as to what demons tend to do. I think a lot of the suicidal ideation that we've seen over the years has come from demonic possession. I can tell you that right now.

I remember on multiple occasions doing the youth crisis hotline and people calling in with suicidal ideation and you would very, like when you would talk to some of these people you knew you weren't talking to them, you knew you were talking to demons. You just knew it. And on a lot of levels, you would spend a lot of time begging the Lord to have mercy on the person.

And once they had a moment of sanity it was like this is your only option. God has delivered you from this possession, now you have to, you have to put your faith and trust in him. You have to ask him to come into your life. It's that simple. You don't have any other way out. I think that there's something to be said about this. I think Jesus knew that the pigs would die and I think that Jesus didn't have a problem with the fact that the pigs would die.

I think that these men made their livings, these men chose to make their livelihood by dishonoring God and doing something that God did not want them to do.

Guest (Male): This is Light on the Hill with Pastor James Kaddis and on the weekends we're going through the Gospel of Mark together. Listen to this study and more at lightonthehillradio.com. Pastor James Kaddis's teachings are also available through the Light on the Hill app and at oneplace.com. Listen to us wherever you get your podcasts, too.

When you have a moment today, send us an email. We'd love it. It's encouraging to hear what the Lord is doing in our listeners' lives and it's an opportunity to thank the Lord for what he's doing. There's a place to contact us at the website lightonthehillradio.com. If God is leading you to support this radio outreach, there's also a place to make a secure donation at lightonthehillradio.com.

Throughout the week you can watch our live shows and short videos, many of which relate to Bible prophecy and help you see current events through a biblical worldview. Look for those at jameskaddis.com. Here's Pastor James once again to share something very exciting with all of you.

James Kaddis: Exciting that is, Jane. I've got to tell you, this is a project that has been three years in the making and we are excited to bring it to you. It is called The Last Book. Yes, it is my writing on the book of Revelation and I'm excited to bring this commentary. I'm going to educate you through the Old Testament, all of the passages that are relevant to understanding this powerful New Testament book and I can tell you this right now, you're going to be blessed.

In this book, we go through the first 11 chapters of the book of Revelation and about six months from now, you will see the other book coming out. We're already working on it. We've been working on it for years and I'm thrilled to give it to you because I know based on what the Bible says, you will be immensely blessed for studying it. It's the only book in the Bible that actually promises you directly to be blessed for studying it and for doing what it says.

And so it is my hope and my prayer that God will be honored and you'll be blessed. The Last Book by Pastor James Kaddis is available on Amazon, at lightonthehillradio.com or jameskaddis.com. As we return to Pastor James, he recalls his early years when he got into investing.

I think it's hilarious by the way. Many, many, many, many years ago when I was a young kid, and I'm not going to say a young kid, but I mean I was in my early 20s, very, very early 20s when I started doing a lot of very active investing. I remember the guy that I started doing some transactions with, he was another pastor. He got very angry with me and this was sort of the beginning of the end of our relationship when I refused to sign a document.

By the way, this is for those of you guys that know finance and stuff, this was in the days where stated income was the thing. You never had to give, if you wanted a loan you never even had to give a paycheck stub. Like you could just simply walk up and say I make this much money. You never even said that. You go to the loan people and they would basically make up whatever they needed to get you the loan so long as you could pay the bills.

And this was the stated income days, right? And so he came to me with a document because I found this out later, when the loan officer said that I needed to sign the document, he knew that I would probably have a difficult time signing it as it was, so he told the loan officer that he would come to me and that he would make an appeal and talk some sense into me.

Now, the issue was had I signed the document, nobody would have been affected by it, but it would have been me lying. And it would have been the difference between us saving $60,000 or paying $60,000 in the transaction. It's money that you don't really see until the end of the sale, but you guys kind of get the idea. And so he was so angry with me because I would not lie on the loan doc. He was super angry.

My statement back to him is, who are you expecting to bless us? Were you expecting God to bless us when we did this or were you expecting your own wiles to bless you? And I'm telling you that because you're not that smart of a guy. You're just not. What you're doing isn't illegal. You're not going to land yourself in jail by doing this, but you definitely have to answer to God.

So are you going to actually lie like that? Are you going to walk in that way just so that you can save some money? I don't know about you, but I have enough faith and trust in God to know that he'll provide for me doing it the honest way. So no I'm not doing it. Oh that was a bad, oh that was such a bad situation.

By the way, the good news about that whole thing is it worked out in ways I never thought possible. God really truly did absolutely bless us, not him, but blessed me on a lot of levels in that situation. The point is this, when you do things God's way you get God's blessings. When you don't do things God's way you receive, you welcome, you welcome the trouble that comes, the folly that comes from your sin. It's a really important picture to draw from here.

Guest (Male): More from the book of Mark is coming up next weekend on Light on the Hill with Pastor James Kaddis. This program is listener supported and brought to you by Calvary Chapel Signal Hill.