The Boy in the Burnt Pajamas- How Seizures are healed by the disciples.

The Boy in the Burnt Pajamas- How Seizures are healed by the disciples.

Mar 9:20-29 

And they brought him unto him: and when he saw him, straightway the spirit tare him; and he fell on the ground, and wallowed foaming.

And he asked his father, How long is it ago since this came unto him? And he said, Of a child.

And ofttimes it hath cast him into the fire, and into the waters, to destroy him: but if thou canst do any thing, have compassion on us, and help us.

Jesus said unto him, If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth.

And straightway the father of the child cried out, and said with tears, Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief.

  When Jesus saw that the people came running together, he rebuked the foul spirit, saying unto him, Thou dumb and deaf spirit, I charge thee, come out of him, and enter no more into him.

And the spirit cried, and rent him sore, and came out of him: and he was as one dead; insomuch that many said, He is dead.

  But Jesus took him by the hand, and lifted him up; and he arose.

  And when he was come into the house, his disciples asked him privately, Why could not we cast him out?

And he said unto them, This kind can come forth by nothing, but by prayer and fasting.

So how is it that a boy has a demon and the only way to remove it is by prayer and fasting? What kind of clandestine formula is this and why would there be such parameter placed on the healing of someone who is such dire need. For God sakes, the child has been flopping around with seizures for years…c’mon Yeshua, that just isn’t fair. Surely the disciples should be able to just do the normal thing in your name and the condition should disappear…especially if it is a supernatural spirit.

“DEMON BE GONE IN JESUS NAME!!!”

But that is not happening. Maybe, just maybe, there is no “spirit” controlling the boy’s physical body. Maybe there is a fast that is for the boy and it will cleans him and heal him like a 60 day juice fast. Or maybe there is a way “faith” can bring healing but one need find ways to build their faith in order to work through the process.

Today when we use the word catharsis, we know that it is in reference to some type of a healing activity. In the New Testament it is related to a ceremonial impurity.

 I find in this depiction of the story the word “foul”.

“…he rebuked the foul spirit”

It is the word akathartos. Referring to the absence of ceremonial purity because of a health condition. When kathairō or akathartos is used, it is used to in conjunction with a physical healing or the absence of a physical healing in connection to a person’s ceremonial purity. It is not specifying some type of a spiritual entity.

And if you follow this word into the Greek versions of the Old Testament, we find the word is always referring to something that is ceremonially unclean not something that is supernatural. It’s relating to the spiritual implications of a physical condition and we find such people as lepers called akathartos in the Greek version of the Old Testament.

Lepers were ceremonially unclean not inhabited by a demon. The condition the boy who repeatedly fell into the fire and the water was afflicted with was indeed the cause of ceremonial uncleanness. He would not have been allowed to go up to the Temple and he would have rendered all who came in contact with him unclean as well. Thinking along those lines, for an uncleanness to go out of someone by prayer and fasting may be a method of restoring the privilege of going up to the Temple….a privilege that was hindered from the child and for anyone who was in contact with the child while ill( unclean).

As for the command of the Messiah telling the deaf and dumb “spirit” to enter the boy no more, I think we can look at two things here. First of all the word “spirit” is referring to a mental disposition. And secondly, the word “enter,” if looked at from an Aramaic sense as Yeshua might have been doing, speaks of ‘attack’. “Enter” is not used in an Aramaic sense to speak of entering someone in the sense of inhabiting. So Christ may have been commanding the condition to no longer attack the child with the sense of ensuring it would not afflict the boy ever again at the word of the Messiah. Another option here may be that Christ was declaring the boy to “kathairō”. He was now clean and Yeshua was not accepting the “uncleanness” of the boy in a spiritual sense so he declare, you are no longer unclean. If that were the case then the boy’s father and family would now be able to attend the Temple service as all who contacted the boy would no longer be “akathartos” either.

ak-ath'-ar-tos

From G1 (as a negative particle) and a presumed derivative of G2508 (meaning cleansed); impure (ceremonially, morally (lewd) or specifically (demonic)): - foul, unclean.

This is a great distance from having a supernatural spirit being actually able to inhabit a person…which is the activity of a God. And then, if we think a supernatural spirit inhabits and controls little boys… we are in the place of believing there are many Gods and not just one.

Are we really seeing a demon inhabit a defenceless child? If a demonic spirit can enter into a defenceless child at will then what defence do any children have against being inhabited by a demonic spirit? Diseases “enter” children, evil spirit beings do not. For if they did, then our God has absolutely no ability to protect an innocent child from a powerful spiritual evil creature. And in this case, the Creator then has devised a formula or removal of said “spirit” that is quite obscure to the believers of the first century at least. If a formula is available for demonic spirit removal then should the Creator not make it readily available instead of obscure to those who want to “help” one possessed?

Finally for this short explanation….the word “spirit” was added to the text in verse 26. That leaves us open to seeing that the writer is not telling of a supernatural spirit being that tore the child. Rather we can find it was the physical condition that tore that child. Because then the verse says; “Mar 9:26  And cried, and rent him sore, and came out of him: and he was as one dead; insomuch that many said, He is dead.

That being the case we can begin to see that the condition caused the cry of the seizing child…a common response seen in seizing children whose convulsions cause intense muscular contraction and expulsion of air across the vocal cords.

And why, does nobody ever wonder why Jesus, standing there with a boy who has a demon in him, does the work to remove the demon but still lets the demon rent the boy sore?…Yeshua removed the demon but He let it physically harm the boy for a dramatic effect for his audience? Isn’t Yeshua able to control a demon, isn’t Yeshua smart enough to know that a demon leaving a boy is going to try to hurt him? Remember, this is a helpless child and at the hands of the Jesus exorcist, according to the traditional view of the story, the empathetic and loving Messiah allows a demonic spirit to have one last hurrah and cause great discomfort for the boy upon exiting.

But this of course was not a demon rather it was a condition of seizure (which I talk about in V3 when dealing with this story). And as the boy seizured during his healing the physical contractions of his seizing muscles are what rent him sore. I can see the pathology of the disease or condition as causing this grave discomfort of renting the boy sore insomuch as to make him appear dead….but he lived…and that is the miracle healing that took place and not a demonic exorcist. We will be getting to this story in our Matthew series on the Imagine No Satan Show in a few weeks.

How I currently explain the following would be something like this. When Jesus said “this kind doesn't go out without prayer fasting” he is clearly referring to the devil that was in the boy. The text doesn't say “evil spirit” and as you know, a “devil” can be a sickness or physical infirmity.

The short answer would be this. The boy had been moonized since he had been an infant. The use of the word lunatic in the passage is indicative of the belief in the period that somehow the moon affected the person’s seizures. So this young boy used to go into fits of seizure and fall in the fire as you've read. Now when the disciples tried to heal the boy it seemed they didn't have enough faith. We find this because Christ tells them it's because of their lack of belief. It's important to note that prayer and fasting is connected to that lack of belief. Again it was because of the unbelief of the disciples that the boy could not have the devil depart from him at the hands of the disciples. In that period, prayer and fasting was not a passive act. It was an intentional process that was used to cleanse a person of distraction and focus on what is important in an effort to increase faith and belief.

The word "he" that's used in this group of verses, could as easily be translated as "it" if we check out the Greek word. If that were allowed based on the Hebrew Scriptures showing us there is no real devil, then the passage would read Jesus rebuked the boy’s sickness(the devil) and it departed out of him and the child was cured from that very hour. Another tell in this passage is that we find the word "cured" being used. If the writer were trying to say there was a supernatural spirit inhabiting the boy causing the seizures then a reference to a physical curing would not be so clearly made, at least in my view.

Why is prayer and fasting brought into this by the Messiah? I think the reason is this. The boy was basically incapable of demonstrating faith for his own healing of a condition that he had been afflicted with since he was a baby. An interesting side note here , when I look at all the healings in Scripture…is that it seems the miracle healings of the Messiah take place on people who have had no input so to speak, into their own disease or condition. Those who are healed contracted the condition or disease in a manner that came about without them being directly responsible for contracting the condition or disease. I am yet to find a disease or condition that a man brings upon himself in the New Testament that ends up being healed by Christ or the apostles. There is more to look at on this end though so I make no conclusion yet. But just as food for thought on it, a person who uses too much alcohol and gives himself kidney failure would not be found to receive healing in the New Testament where a person who's born with a shriveled kidney perhaps may be a candidate of miracle healing in the New Testament.

So again,  to tell the disciples that prayer and fasting is the only way for this kind of a "devil" to be eradicated from a person, I think we're hearing the Messiah say, removing a condition such as this requires a kind of faith that comes from humility. If a disciple were to prayerfully fast in order to seek the will of the most high on curing this child, then that disciple may in fact be successful. Remember, we find the reason there is no curing of this condition by the disciples to be that they had too much "unbelief". Even the father of the child admitted to his unbelief. Perhaps all parties were given a method to increase their belief by Yeshua’s statement that prayer and fasting would do the trick in this case. So the solution to unbelief according to the Messiah is prayer and fasting.

It is also important to explain what "this kind" means. It seems to be referencing the kind of condition that is entrenched in a nascent point of a person's life. And it is the kind of condition wherein the person themselves cannot exercise reasoning or faith because of the condition, therefore the members of Christ's body who can exercise that faith need to find a way to acquire it. Prayer and fasting always "centers" a believer. Thus increasing their "belief".

I explain in great detail in volume 2 and 3 to what a daimon is. Find those at www.imaginenosatan.com or email me for a copy.

And I have a fair amount of content in volume 3 on this scenario that required prayer and fasting. Let me know if you not able to locate it and send you some pieces from that book. Just as an added note, I pasted the passage below that were talking about in version that takes the word "he" out of the picture and the term “out of” is better translated as “from” as is found to be used in the majority of other places it is used in Matthew..

Mat 17:18  And Jesus rebuked the opposing condition; and it departed from him: and the child was cured from that very hour.