What happened to the demons Jesus cast out?

Question 8040.

When Jesus cast out demons the Gospels almost never tell us where they went, and the silence is consistent enough to look deliberate. Luke records crowds of deliverances in a single sentence and moves straight on to the preaching.

There are a few hints, and they are worth gathering. But I want to say at the outset that this is an area where confident answers usually come from somewhere other than Scripture, and I would rather leave a gap than fill it with speculation.

What the Gospels actually report

The standard formula is brief. They came out. He rebuked them and they came out. He cast out the spirits with a word. Matthew 8:16 says He cast out the spirits with a word and healed all who were sick, and the sentence moves on without a backward glance.

That brevity is itself informative. The Gospel writers were interested in the authority of Jesus and in the restoration of the person, not in the subsequent movements of the departed spirits. When Jesus cast out demons the camera stayed on the man who was healed.

I think there is a lesson in that for how we handle the subject. Wherever the Bible is brief, we should be brief. Wherever it is detailed, we should be detailed. Reversing that is how most bad teaching begins.

Mark 1:39 sums up a whole preaching tour in a sentence: he went throughout all Galilee, preaching in their synagogues and casting out demons. No detail, no follow-up, no interest in where any of them ended up. When Jesus cast out demons it was one part of a ministry whose centre was always the message.

The waterless places

The fullest hint comes in Matthew 12:43 and Luke 11:24. When the unclean spirit has gone out of a person, it passes through waterless places seeking rest and finds none. Then it says, I will return to my house from which I came.

Waterless places, or arid regions, carried strong associations in Jewish thought with desolation and with the haunts of unclean things. Isaiah uses similar imagery of ruined cities. The picture is of a restless wandering rather than a destination.

So when Jesus cast out demons, at least in some cases, the result appears to have been a spirit at large and unsettled rather than a spirit confined. That is not a comfortable thought, and Jesus did not offer it as one. He offered it as a warning about empty houses.

The warning attached to it is the point of the passage. A person from whom Jesus cast out demons and who then remains empty is in a worse position than before, because the house has been tidied and left unoccupied. This is why deliverance detached from the gospel is not a neutral activity. It is dangerous.

The abyss they dreaded

Luke 8:31 tells us the demons begged Jesus not to command them to depart into the abyss. The request establishes two things: the abyss exists as a place of confinement for such beings, and He had the authority to send them there on the spot.

That He did not do so in that instance tells us something about timing rather than about power. Matthew 8:29 has the demons crying out, “Have you come here to torment us before the time?” They knew judgement was fixed and they knew it had not yet arrived.

So the answer to what happened when Jesus cast out demons is partly that they were released into a world where their sentence had been passed but not yet executed. That is precisely the situation they are still in, and they know it better than we do.

Why He did not destroy them

It is a fair question. He plainly could have. The demons themselves raised it in Mark 1:24, asking, “Have you come to destroy us?” The answer, at that stage, was no.

Scripture sets out a schedule. Revelation 20 places the final consignment of the enemy to the lake of fire after the Millennium, and Matthew 25:41 speaks of eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. The first coming of Jesus dealt decisively with sin at the cross and left the execution of judgement on these beings to a later stage.

Colossians 2:15 says He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, triumphing over them in the cross. Disarmed, not destroyed. The victory is complete and the mopping up is scheduled.

Meanwhile the enemy operates under a sentence he cannot appeal. Every time Jesus cast out demons during His ministry He was giving a preview of a judgement already fixed, which is exactly how the demons themselves understood it when they asked whether He had come to torment them before the time.

When Jesus cast out demons into the pigs

The one exception to the general silence is the Gerasene account, where we are told exactly where they went. They asked to enter the herd of pigs and Jesus gave them permission, and the herd rushed down the steep bank and drowned.

The episode has puzzled readers for centuries, and I do not think we are given enough to explain it fully. What it demonstrates beyond doubt is that when Jesus cast out demons the destination was His to determine, and that they could not so much as touch a pig without permission. It also shows what they do with whatever they are given.

The authority He passed on

This did not end with His earthly ministry. Matthew 10:1 records that He gave the twelve authority over unclean spirits, and Luke 10 has the seventy-two returning with joy that even the demons were subject to them in His name.

Acts continues the pattern. Philip in Samaria, Paul in Philippi with the slave girl, Paul in Ephesus where handkerchiefs carried from his body brought deliverance. And Acts 19 records the sons of Sceva attempting the formula without the relationship and being beaten and driven out of the house naked and wounded, which remains the most vivid warning in Scripture against treating this as a technique.

The name of Jesus is not an incantation. It is a relationship, and where the relationship is absent the name does not function as a tool.

Notice as well what Jesus said to the seventy-two when they came back excited. He did not deny that they had cast out demons; He redirected their joy, telling them not to rejoice that the spirits were subject to them but that their names were written in heaven. Authority over the unseen realm is real and it is not the best thing about being a Christian.

That correction has saved me from a good deal of nonsense over the years. Anyone whose ministry is built on demonstrations of power over the demonic has been gently told, by Jesus Himself, to look somewhere else for their assurance. See also Luke 10:20.

What this means for us

It means the demonic is real, defeated and still active, all at the same time. Those three facts sit together throughout the New Testament without any sense of contradiction, and any teaching that drops one of them will go wrong.

It also means our confidence rests on the cross rather than on our method. 1 John 3:8 says the reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil, and the Greek verb luo carries the sense of loosing or dissolving. He came to undo what the enemy had done.

And it means the emphasis should fall where the Gospels put it, on the person restored. See also what unclean spirits are and where demons live.

Where I stop

People want a diagram, and I do not have one. I cannot tell you the mechanics of how a spirit leaves a body, or where a particular one went afterwards, or whether the same beings are still operating today. Scripture does not say and I am not going to guess.

What I can tell you is that every single time Jesus cast out demons in the Gospels the encounter was over quickly, the person was restored completely, and nobody left the scene with a technique. That is a pattern worth trusting even where it leaves questions open.

So, now what?

Let the brevity of Scripture set the size of your interest. The Gospels give the demons a few sentences and give Jesus everything else, and a healthy Christian mind will settle at roughly the same proportions.

And take comfort from the timetable. The beings He cast out are still awaiting the sentence they already know is coming. You, if you are in Jesus, are awaiting something rather different. Which of those two futures is shaping how you live this week?

They are waiting for a sentence. You are waiting for a Saviour. Those are not the same kind of waiting at all.

“He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him.”

Colossians 2:15, ESV