What does torment us before the time mean (Matthew 8:29)?

Coming to the other side He is met in the country of the Gergesenes by two possessed by demons, coming out of the tombs, the place of death, exceedingly dangerous, so that no one was able to pass by that way. They could not be bound, not even with chains and they cut themselves with stones (Mark 5:1-7). Not one demon, but many demons had entered into them; their name in one of them was Legion (Luke 8:30). What awful witnesses, these naked, bleeding, raving and tearing demoniacs were of the body and soul destroying power of the enemy. When our Lord appeared in the land the evil one had by the demons taken possession of large numbers of people and was driving them on to perdition. It will even be worse before His return. Satan and his angels will be cast out into the earth and his angels with him. This will be during the great tribulation. And even now those possessed by demons are continually increasing. The ever changing, as well as new forms, of insanity, many of them at least, if not all, must be connected with the influence of these evil spirits. The so-called "mediums" of Spiritism and adepts in occult "sciences" are undoubtedly demon-possessed. Surely our days, the days long ago predicted, are the latter times in which some apostatize from the faith, giving their mind (it is the mind where these evil workings begin) to deceiving spirits and teachings of demons (1 Tim. 4:1). And opening the soul to the deceiving spirits and teachings of demons means their dreadful entering in and taking full possession. We cannot follow here this dark theme, much as it is needed in our days. And, He, the Son of God has come to destroy the works of the Devil, and through death annul him, who has the might of death, that is, the Devil. And here the demons confess Him, that He is Son of God. "And behold they cried out, saying, What have we to do with thee, Son of God? Hast thou come here before the time to torment us?" It is the first confession of Him as Son of God we have in the Gospel. They give Him His right title. The demons believe and tremble (James 2:19). They see and know Him as their future Judge, but they argue that the right moment for the punishment is not yet. The knowledge of the demons according to this is threefold: They know Him as Son of God, as their Judge and that the judgment will take place at a certain time. But Satan with his lies drives his countless victims on in unbelief to deny every one of these facts that Christ is Son of God and the Judge, and the most striking thing is that the father of lies succeeds to put himself down as a myth.

He shows Himself next as the one who has power over these demons and that they may well fear Him. They cried out and then asked, "If thou cast us out send us away into the herd of swine." He said: "Go!" What power over these legions is His! Can they ever touch Him or harm Him? No, never! And Son of God, declared by resurrection from the dead as all power in heaven and in earth and the day will be when all things shall be subjected under His feet. Then "at the name of Jesus every knee will bow, of heavenly and earthly and infernal beings." And we are linked with Him, His victory is ours, we too can triumph over these evil beings. Thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. "For the rest brethren, be strong in the Lord, in the might of His strength. Put on the panoply of God, that ye may be able to stand against the artifices of the Devil; because our struggle is not against blood and flesh, but against principalities, against authorities, against the universal lords of this darkness, against spiritual power of wickedness in the heavenlies" (Eph. 6:10-13).

419 The "torment" (βάσανος) of verses 23 and 28 has already set in, with doom to follow: cf. 2 Peter 2:9, where κολαζομένους is rendered in R.V. by "under punishment." Similar must be the self-accusing thoughts of guilty persons during confinement preliminary to their appearance before a tribunal.

100 Here then we have the peculiar, the special, cause of this difference: they are the children of God, therefore the children of the resurrection; they stand in altogether another character from the children of this world. All shall rise certainly at the coming day of retribution, but it is quite different from the quickening power of life, communicated in virtue of the oneness of the saint with Jesus. Every knee shall certainly bow to Him; be they godly, or be they earthly, or be they the power of darkness; whether they be angels, or principalities, or powers, all shall acknowledge Him when He appears. This was just the witness which the devil gave of His power when he came on earth - "Art thou come to torment us before the time? "Plainly then there is a time set apart, of which they are conscious, when full judgment will be executed on them. "They besought him that he would not command them to go out into the deep," or abyss. Though devils, possessing the power of such, they recognised One before whom they quailed. There is a time coming when He, before whom they even then quailed, will bind them in everlasting chains no more to rove about. This almighty power they even then recognised in the Person of Jesus Christ, when apparently in weakness; therefore they exclaim, under the conscious terror of His power, Do not torment us before the time! Do not command us to go into the pit! He is Lord of all, and His authority extends to, and shall be exerted over, the ungodly, as well as His saints; in the resurrection all are then brought out of the power of Satan. But the resurrection of which Christ here speaks is peculiar to His own, when He says, "I am the resurrection and the life." "I know," said Martha, "that he shall rise again in the resurrection at the last day." But what comfort could that bring, as regarded the bare fact of his rising, for so would the most ungodly sinner rise then? But the blessedness is this, that where Christ is made the life of the soul, there is the certainty of a resurrection to life eternal in Christ's life; when the life of Jesus comes in, there is that within over which the power of Satan is unable to prevail.

The Lord disembarks in the country of the Gergesenes. There the power of the enemy shows itself in all its horrors. If man, to whom the Lord was come in grace, did not know Him, the devils knew their Judge in the Person of the Son of God. The man was possessed by them. The fear they had of torment at the judgment of the last day is applied in the man's mind to the immediate presence of the Lord: "Art thou come to torment us before the time?" Wicked spirits act on men by the dread of their power; they have none unless they are feared. But faith only can take this fear from man. I am not speaking of the lusts on which they act, nor of the wiles of the enemy; I speak of the power of the enemy. Resist the devil and he will flee from thee. Here the devils wished to manifest the reality of this power. The Lord permits it in order to make it plain, that in this world it is not merely man that is in question whether good or bad, but that also which is stronger than man. The devils enter into the swine, which perish in the waters. Sorrowful reality plainly demonstrated that it was no question of mere disease or of sinful lusts, but of wicked spirits! However, thanks be to God, it was a question also of One who, although a man on earth, was more powerful than they. They are compelled to acknowledge this power, and they appeal to it. There is no idea of resistance. In the temptation in the wilderness Satan had been overcome. Jesus completely delivers the man whom they had oppressed with their evil power. The power of the devils was nothing before Him. He could have delivered the world from all the power of the enemy, if that only had been in question, and from all the ills of humanity. The strong man was bound, and the Lord spoiled his goods. But the presence of God, of Jehovah, troubles the world even more than the power of the enemy degrades and domineers over mind and body. The control of the enemy over the heart — too peaceful, and alas! too little perceived — is more mighty than his strength. This succumbs before the word of Jesus; but the will of man accepts the world as it is, governed by the influence of Satan. The whole city, who had witnessed the deliverance of the demoniac and the power of Jesus present among them, entreat Him to depart. Sad history of the world! The Lord came down with power to deliver the world — man — from all the power of the enemy; but they would not. Their distance from God was moral, and not merely bondage to the enemy's power. They submitted to his yoke, they had become used to it, and they would not have the presence of God.

The healing of Legion comes in exact order as regards the passage over the sea; but as to the general order, is, consequently, displaced with it. But the picture it affords of the character and results of Christ's presence, tends to complete the divine instruction of this Gospel. Power was there to set aside wholly the most mighty, and, for man, unbridled and irresistible power of Satan. The time was not come for his being bound in the bottomless pit, and the demons therefore say, "Art thou come to torment us before the time?" The effect on the poor maniac is not told here. That is blessedly given in Luke; who, therefore, only speaks of one in whom this effect was produced. The simple point here was the complete power of Satan, and the power present to set it aside. In Luke we find the subsequent service of the delivered remnant unfolded. Here it is the present position of Jesus and the Jews. A word where His power is exercised, gives complete deliverance, and thus the remnant are set free; but, as regards the mass, the result is figured by the unclean swine. They hurry on to destruction. As to Christ, He leaves their coast.

When the man spoke, the words were framed by his lips, but the intelligence behind them was that of the demons who controlled him. They knew what manner of Man the Lord was, even if others did not. On the other hand they did not know the manner of His service. There will indeed be an hour when the Lord will consign these demons along with Satan their master into torment, but that was not His work at that moment. Much less was it the manner of His service at that time in regard to men. To the demoniac Jesus came, bringing not torment but deliverance.

They come to the other side of the sea, only to find there the enemy's power rampant. Two possessed by demons, coming out of the tombs, stop the way against all comers. Matthew does not go into detail here, as Mark and Luke do. His object is just to show the power of the Lord as manifested in these various deliverances, and details have not for him the same importance. The ghastly horror of the dwelling of these living men in the abodes of death, and their insane fury before which men quailed, are given to put in contrast the absolute surrender of their prey by those who held them captive, when the Lord appears. Men; blinded of Satan, may dispute His right, not they. Striking it is that they give Him at once the title, which men deny Him, of Son of God, and recognize Him as their future Judge. But they plead that the day of judgment has not come, and can He be come to torment them before the time?

But mighty as a spirit is, and especially when in such multitudinous and tyrannical force of evil, demons have no sceptical hardihood. They believe and shudder (James 2:19). Therefore did they beseech that He would not command them to depart into the abyss; for their sure doom was before their eyes; and they knew that when He reigns, they will be cast there, which they dreaded even now. Art Thou come hither to torment us before the time? is the cry in the first Gospel. So, when they begged to enter a great herd of swine feeding on the mountain side, the Lord gave them leave; and the swine, about two thousand, no sooner received the unclean spirits, than they rushed down the steep and were choked in the sea. It was the witness, to all that believe scripture, of the Lord's delivering power on the one hand and of Satan's destructive energy on the other. It is idle here, as everywhere, to confound possession by demons with either lunacy or disease. Either or both might be also, or neither be, and yet that possession of evil spirits. The reality was thus transparent. The effect on the swine made the objective fact undeniably plain, and the suggestion of a physical or mental derangement inexcusably false.

Arriving at the other side He is met by two demon-Possessed men. Mark speaks only of one man, and supplies many more details. Matthew is not so interested in the details of men's condition as in the authority of the Lord over demons; though he affirms their excessive ferocity which hindered men from passing that way. If the Lord has shown His authority over the flesh in verses 18 to 22, and His authority over the world in verses 23 to 27, now He is shown to have no less authority over Satan's power.

The demons within the man acknowledge what Israel did not, that Jesus is the Son of God. They knew there is a day of judgment for them too, and feared that the Son of God would act in tormenting authority before the time. His very presence cannot but trouble them. But they were guilty of dreadfully tormenting men. They expect the Son of God to expel them from the men, but plead to be allowed to infest a herd of swine. God's angels evidently have no such inclination, but evil spirits seem anxious to possess a body in which to express their evil proclivities.

This malignant power of Satan is beyond the power of man to subdue. One of these had been often bound with fetters and chains, but "neither could any man tame him." All Acts of Parliament, and all the societies of men will be unsuccessful to tame him. Only One can. "The demons believe and shudder." Alas, that this is more than we can say of man in his hardness! Man's believing does not make it true, nor does his unbelief make it false. "The demons believe." "What have we to do with thee, thou Son of God?" "Jesus" ought not to be there, according to the best text. There is no Saviour for demons. "He takes not hold of angels" (Heb. 2:16). A perfect man, and perfectly a man, He passed the angels by. The fallen angels fell without a tempter; man fell by a tempter; and God will judge that tempter. "Art thou come hither to torment us before the time?" The time will come. The devil has access to heaven now, but he will be cast out of heaven and his angels too. The Lord was looking on to Rev. 12, when He said, "I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven." After the church is taken home