MARK 1.25-26: But Jesus rebuked him, saying, “Be silent, and come out of him!” (26) And the unclean spirit, convulsing him and crying out with a loud voice, came out of him.” (ESV)
There have been some scholars and commentators who believe that the idea of a demon or unclean spirit or evil spirit is merely ancient world mythology, superstition, or primitive thinking.
But if we are to treat the text fairly and interpret it in the way it was written, i.e., a historical account, then we don’t have the latitude to conclude that the Gospel of Mark got it wrong. This gospel account affirms that an unclean spirit was inside this man and when Jesus commanded it to leave, it did so.
And Jesus determined the outcome of this confrontation with His spoken word alone. Jesus did not struggle or wrestle with the demon. Nor did He utilize any supporting symbolic objects to buttress His efforts.
And so the power of the spoken word of Jesus can be observed over and over in the gospels. Jesus healed people by His spoken word and He forgave sins in the same way.
It is easy in contemporary culture to think that the confrontation of Jesus with demonic powers might have been unseemly, and we might have wanted to recoil away from such. But to my observation, the New Testament presents Jesus casting out demons from people as a manifestation of the glory of God at work in the real world. Let us not be influenced about how we think of this by modern-day moviemaking.
The demons written about in the New Testament were powerless when in the presence of Jesus. He had these evil spirits under His authority, demonstrating the power of God at work, benefiting peoples’ lives in a material and practical way.
The following link is a song I have written regarding the power of Jesus to speak, and it comes to pass.