Jesus heals the Demoniac

Jesus had just tested the faith of his disciples, who were mainly fishermen, with a raging storm on the familiar Sea of Galilee. They sat in stunned amazement as Jesus spoke to the storm, and it stopped.

They then arrived at the Gentile side of the lake known as the region of the Gadarenes, which would be utterly foreign to the young Jewish men [Matthew 8:28-34] [Mark 5:1-20] [Luke 8:26-39]. According to Mark and Luke, only Jesus got out of a boat after crossing the lake and was immediately confronted by two demon-possessed men. The focus moves to the man called Legion because a multitude of demons possessed him, posing a danger to anyone who tried to pass. He lived within the area’s tombs and had supernatural strength, so he could not be bound. As an unrestrained demon-possessed, naked Gentile living amongst the tombs near swine, he was perpetually unclean on many levels in the eyes of the Jews [Numbers 19:11-14] [Isaiah 65:4].

When Jesus commanded the demons to leave the man, they begged to be allowed to enter a herd of swine grazing nearby. They wanted to avoid their eternal fate of being locked up in the abyss or place of the dead. Jesus agreed, and the pigs—numbering about 2000—rushed down a bank into the Sea of Galilee and drowned. The destructive power of the demons was demonstrated in the exorcism, leaving them homeless.

The dismayed herdsmen ran off to spread the news, and terrified local people begged Jesus to leave their region, caring more about their pigs than the demon-possessed men. The healed man begged to go with Jesus, but the Savior told him to go home and tell his friends what happened. This newly christened missionary proclaimed the salvation of Jesus throughout this Gentile region of Decapolis. “Legion” became the first person commissioned by Jesus to spread the Good News to non-Jews.

A headlong stampede by a herd of demon-possessed pigs into the Sea of Galilee is remembered at Kursi, a picturesque site beneath the Golan Heights on the eastern side of the lake. Kursi had become a significant place of Christian pilgrimage by the 5th century and remained so for a thousand years.

Today, Kursi is the site of Israel’s largest known Byzantine monastery complex, whose impressive remains have been partly reconstructed. On the side of the hill behind the monastery are the remains of an earlier chapel, built into a cave. It overlooks a vast boulder enclosed in a retaining wall of stones—identifying the site as the place of Jesus’ miracle.