Luke 8-9

[wolfpurplemoon]

Jesus cures a boy of epilepsy, but says he drove an unclean spirit out of him, surely the Son of God would know the difference even if the cause of epilepsy hadn't yet been discovered by human society. It's strange that Jesus never knows more than the people of the time would have known about things like this, he could've advanced humanity by telling the people useful things like germ theory instead of creating more divisions and holding back progress.

Comments

interesting take

[shane jones (from livejournal.com)]

While you are 100% correct that Christ could have easily "advanced humanity" in areas of medicine or science or even engineering for that matter. I submit that those issues were never His purpose. It's kind of like a "jack of all trades" coming into your home to fix the washer. He could easily fix the broken lamp and the clogged sink as well, but that is not what his purpose in the home was. In the same way, Christ's purpose was and is to save mankind's soul. Not to make us better doctors or whatever. In that context, He was doing exactly what he was sent to do.....ie, showing the power of the one, true God.

[zen-says.livejournal.com]

as much as you would like to believe he came to show power, he has only 1 mission, to die because his father says so

[shane jones (from livejournal.com)]

Yes but why did he have to die? To save mankind of course. What would have been the point in simply showing up, claiming to be one with God, and then being put to death. He did so much more while here. He did miracle after miracle to give proof of his claims. His purpose was to come and show himself to be the true Messiah and THEN be killed. He did that by showing the power of God. Otherwise his death would have never been seen as the death of anything more than a common man and who would have put their faith in that?

[zen-says.livejournal.com]

he have to die to save mankind,,,,,,,,,, why? is he not god? is not he who forgives? can't he simply forgive without dying? No? his ways are not my ways? his ways are higher than my ways? why must die to forgive? who's idea was that? is it not he the one that create laws?

[shane jones (from livejournal.com)]

huh?? Are those questions or statements? I'm not sure what you are getting at?

[zteccc.livejournal.com]

What is epilepsy? We see a boy written of who has seizures, convulsions, foams at the mouth, etc. The father says this happens repeatedly and constantly, yet with epilepsy, it is rare that someone would have repeated and constant seizures. Epilepsy is a generic term for any affliction involving seizures that cannot be explained by other means. Seizures can come from other causes such as trauma, hypoglycemia, malnutrition, etc., but whenever someone has a seizure that cannot be tied to another cause, it is grouped into the classification of epilepsy. As such, even demon possession would be grouped into epilepsy until it was proven otherwise.

From the NET, the father says (v39) "A spirit seizes him". He also says it "hardly ever leaves him alone, torturing him severely". When the boy approaches Jesus, he immediately goes into a fit although the situation wouldn't really hold the stress or other triggers that often accompany an epileptic seizure. The event suggests that an intelligence was directing these seizures rather than them being triggered by events or random as epileptic seizures are.

Most telling, perhaps, is that the boy was healed without surgery or medicine. Whether the seizures were epileptic or demonic, the fact remains that Jesus, with only a short prayer, cured the boy.

This event is told in Matthew, Mark and Luke so it is supported by testimony of the different sources of the authors. All of the gospels agree that it was a demonic possession. In Jesus ministry, demons were cast out of many people. The disciples had experience with them and had witnessed many demons being cast out. They knew the difference between a sick person who just needed healing, and a demon possessed person. Note that many times, people are healed without mention of a demon being cast out. This boy needed both healing and the casting out of a demon.

Jesus did know more than the people of his time would know. Consider, how fruitless it would be if he started telling them about microbes, germs, DNA, etc. Jesus would have had to preach for decades just to educate them to the point where they might understand the basics. They didn't have any of the tools necessary to understand these things, and these lessons weren't the point of Jesus' ministry anyway.

I'm curious as to what progress you see Jesus holding back.

9:57-62 Jesus makes it clear that following him means committing to a focus on him. At first this seems pretty difficult because we have so much going on in our lives. We have relationships, jobs, responsibilities, etc. We have many things that we place in front of God and we aren't willing to give those up. Jesus is not really asking us to abandon those things, but just to realize that all of that is less important than following God and salvation. People put off their decisions about God until they get their lives in order. In doing so, they place that life as more important than God when they really need to place God at the forefront (which often helps one see with perspective how relatively unimportant many of the trivialities of life are).

-- Jeff