Hurling Headlong to Hell

Good evening, friends. I want to tell you a story tonight about a man who was possessed by demon spirits and how they tormented him and how he eventually was delivered from them. There are people out here in this community tonight who are loaded with demons.

You read about it in the paper, how someone went out and killed for the sake of murder. And when they got through, they're arrested and they're asked why they did it. And they'll tell you that a voice told them to kill those people.

A voice influenced them to do evil. Demons, brother! I used to know a Satan worshiper. And he told me that he was assigned a chief demon who had an ancient name and that told him to go to farms in the country and steal goats from those farms and then go make an altar and slit their throats and sacrifice them to Satan.

This Satan worshiper told me that his eyes were opened to the spirit world and he could see demons walking around every day in crowds of people. He said when he went to the shopping mall and watched folks walk by, he could see demons walking right beside them or directly behind them. That's what this man told me.

Like I said, there are demons all over this town tonight. And if your eyes were opened to see them, it would terrify you so you couldn't sleep tonight. Oh, well, our story, friends, this evening from the Bible is about such a person, a man with demon possession.

In Luke's Gospel in chapter 8, we find out about him. Listen to this story now as we read about how Jesus encountered a demon-possessed man from a graveyard. Let me tell you about it, friends, and please give me your undivided attention.

This is a matter of life and death for some of you. You're going to want to hear this story and see how it turns out. It talks about how Jesus and his disciples landed their boat in a place called Gadarenes by the Sea of Galilee.

Listen to his story as I pick it up from Luke's Gospel in verse 27. And he went forth to land there. I met him a man out of the city, a certain man which had devils a long time, and he wore no clothes, neither a boat he in any house, but in the tombs.

Let me pause here to say, friends, here out of nowhere comes a naked man crawling with demons, and he lives in a graveyard. I witness this very thing in real life, friends. Hear me now.

I often visited a cemetery in New England because there was a grave there of a Christian man who died young at the age of 29 who was famous as a missionary to the Indians. His name was David Brainerd. You might have heard of him.

Well, anyhow, he's buried in the town of Northampton, Massachusetts, and there's an ancient cemetery there with graves several hundred years old. This man, David Brainerd, died in 1747. Often I would go up there to visit his grave, and every time I visited his grave I would encounter a demon that lived in that cemetery.

Listen to me. I'm telling you what I saw, what I heard. This demon was a disembodied spirit that lived in the tombs in that cemetery.

It was a mocking demon that laughed and laughed in a high-pitched voice, a mocking laugh. The first few times I visited that cemetery I would walk over to the sound of that voice to see if I could find who was making that voice of a young man laughing, and I'd come right up to where that voice was among the gravestones, but I could not see anything with my visible eye. There was nothing there but a demon spirit.

I had an eyewitness to this one year as I brought with me to that cemetery a fellow evangelist who was sensitive to the spirit world, and he heard that demon mocking and laughing right behind us too, and it so terrified my friend that he wanted to leave that cemetery immediately, and we did, and I haven't been back since. That was over 12 years ago, but I say all this to you, friends, because demons are all around us in society tonight, and the more wicked a society is, the more prominent demon activity is in wicked America tonight. There are demon spirits taking possession of people as I speak and making them do evil.

Now listen to how this demon-possessed man came up to Jesus as Jesus just disembarked out of a boat from the Sea of Galilee. Listen, friends. When he saw Jesus, he cried out and fell down before him, and with a loud voice said, Oh, what have I to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of God most high? I beseech thee, torment me not.

Oh, what that demon is saying through that demon-possessed man, friends, is that he doesn't want to go to hell before his time of torment and imprisonment, because there is a common day when the Lord Jesus will sit on a great white throne and judge the living and the dead, and at that time, the devil and his demons will be cast into a lake of fire, which is hell in its torments. Listen to me, friends. If you die as an unsaved person outside the blood of Christ, that lake of fire is your destination as well.

That's why it's so important that you hear me in this message this evening. It may save your very life. This demon-possessed man had been put in chains by the villagers, but he was too strong for those chains, and he kept breaking them, and he kept cutting himself with the stones of that graveyard.

People left him alone. They were afraid of him. Now listen to this man's name.

And Jesus asked him, saying, What is thy name? And he said, Legion, because many devils were entered into him. Now, friends, in Bible times, a legion was a large unit of the Roman army consistent of anywhere from 1,000 to 1,500 men. This demon-possessed man was loaded with demon spirits.

Now hear what these demons wanted Jesus to do. And there was a herd of many swine feeding on the mountain, and they besought him that he would suffer them to enter into them. And he suffered them, meaning Jesus answered their request to go out of the man and go into that vast herd of hogs feeding on the mountain, for these demons were used to taking possession of things, and they did not want to wander about disembodied, but to go into a herd of pigs on that mountain.

Society today, in rebellion to God, is like that bunch of filthy pigs on a mountain. For man in his natural state is wretched and filthy in sin and abominable to God like swine were an abomination to the Jews. My Bible in Job describes how God views man in his natural condition.

Apart from salvation in Christ, how much more abominable and filthy is man which drinks iniquity like water. That's you and your sins, friends, drinking it like water. You can't get enough of sin and its pleasures, friends.

Admit it. Now listen, friends, to what happens to those demon-possessed hogs. Then went the devils out of the man and entered into the swine, and the herd ran violently down a steep place into the lake and were choked.

Did you hear that, friends? They were drowned in that lake. This is the picture-perfect story of mankind today, up on a crowded mountain like a huge herd of swine crawling all over each other's backs to get at their slop and to wallow in their hog-mire sins. And every hog in that herd is happy in his or her condition without God in the world.

They are content to satisfy the cravings of their flesh so long as they can travel in the security of that herd. But here's where we come to the title of my message this evening, friends. And the title of my message fits my story like a glove.

My message is called Hurling Headlong to Hell. Because that's what men and women are doing tonight. They're in a vast crowd crawling over each other's backs in a mad rush to make money and to satisfy their sensual lusts like filthy hogs in a herd falling headlong off a cliff into a sea to be drowned and destroyed.

Listen to me, friends. Some folks go off that cliff from a bar stool. Some folks go off that cliff from a massage parlor.

Some folks go off that cliff from a night of debauchery and sin. Some run off that cliff and are hurled headlong into hell from ignorance of what salvation is in Christ Jesus. Some go and die in their sins and wake up in hell tonight in chains and in flames.

Some go to hell in rebellion to God. But many, hear me now, many go hurling headlong to hell from a church pew of religion or formalism. They are hurled off that cliff thinking their good works will save them.

They are hurled off that cliff believing they are too good to go to hell. They are hurled off that cliff from a perverted view of God and by swallowing a perverted gospel. Some folks mistakenly go off that cliff thinking their church membership will save them.

But all of these travel the same wide road of ruin, of perdition and damnation because if you die outside the blood of Christ for pardon of sin, then you die apart from Christ in your sins and you are hurled headlong into that dark ravine of hell. Hell, I say. Listen to me, friends.

Your eternal soul is at stake here. Don't die wrongly and end up being hurled headlong into that bottomless pit of hell. Some nice church folk go tumbling off that cliff from easy believism.

Now listen to what happened to that man whom the demon spirits went out of. Listen and see what God did for him. You see, when that herd of swine ran off that cliff down into the sea to be drowned, the man who were in charge of that herd went into town to tell the story, to tell what happened.

The dust that rose from those 2,000 hogs running down that mountain was still lingering in the air when the man came back from town and found the man who had been possessed by the demons. He was a changed man. A changed man, I tell you.

Listen to me, friends. Then they went out to see what was done and came to Jesus and found the man out of whom the devils were departed, sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind, and they were afraid. Let me tell you, friends, there isn't a sinner in this town tonight who is so evil, so full of sin, so full of the devils, that he can't be saved just the same way as Jesus delivered and saved that man.

Because when a man comes to Christ and is saved, they are delivered from the kingdom of darkness, brought by a miracle of God through regeneration into the kingdom of God and light and life. This man was now clothed and in his right mind. That can happen to you, friend, because if you've been living for this world and the devil, you've not been in your right mind.

You know you haven't. This man was found sitting at the feet of Jesus, meaning he was wanting to learn from Jesus in a life of discipleship. As he followed him, he was changed.

He was changed. Everyone who knew him previously now saw the difference. If you get saved, friends, others will take note of it.

Let me share with you a personal story about myself. Listen to it, please. My family was away years ago on vacation over a Fourth of July weekend, and I was at home busy working.

I made lots of money back in those days. I was a wealthy man, a wealthy businessman, and I was a member of a church, a Baptist church, but I was religiously lost just the same. Did you hear me? I was lost, unconverted, and on my way to being hurled off a cliff, headlong into hell in my church membership.

There are millions of people like that today, friends, secure in the church membership, but they're on their way to hell just the same because they've never been born again by the Spirit of God. You're not going to make it either, friend, unless you've been born from above and washed in the blood. Oh, well, while my family was away, I got saved.

God really saved me. At first, he had to get me lost and show me that, although I was a good church member, I was an unconverted man in my sins, and on my way to hell, God gave me the grace of repentance that day, friends, and if he saves you, he will do the same. He'll give you the grace of repentance as well because Jesus declared, except you repent, you will all likewise perish.

Oh, well, God did a work of grace in my heart that day, friends, and he saved me and changed me. I was now in my right mind, and I wanted to sit at the feet of Jesus and learn of him, and when you get saved, friend, you want to do the same, to sit at the feet of Jesus and learn from him. Oh, well, after I got saved, I didn't mention it to my wife right away because I was afraid to tell her.

I was afraid to tell her she didn't marry a Christian man after all. I was too embarrassed to tell her. I had to get my courage up, and one morning, a few weeks later, in the breakfast room, I told her while we were sitting at breakfast, I looked her in the eyes and said I had something important to tell her, and she needed to listen to me.

She looked concerned as I told her the following words. I said, I want you to know that when you were away, I got saved. God really saved me.

She answered by saying, I know. Since I've been back, I've noticed a change in you. Did you hear that, friends? And if God saves you, others will see that change as well, like that formerly demon-possessed man who went around naked, cutting himself on rocks among the tombs and wandering about in spiritual darkness until he met Christ, had an encounter with Him, and experienced change.

And if you come to Christ in sincerity of heart, feeling your sinfulness, and your need of a Savior from sin, confessing your sins, and believing on Him, and owning Him as Savior and Lord, He can save even you. This saved man wanted to join up with the band of disciples and go around following Jesus. But Jesus told him, and this is the last verse in our passage this evening, friends.

Listen to it. Jesus said, Return to thine own house and show how great things God hath done unto thee. And he went his way and published throughout the whole city how great things Jesus had done unto him.

Here was a man, friends, naked and living in a graveyard, possessed of many devils, and God delivered him and saved him. And this man got his right mind because he was now on the right side of God in agreement with Him. And he becomes an evangelist telling others about salvation found in Christ Jesus.

That's what happened to me, friends. God saved me, delivered me, washed my filthy, rotten sins in His own blood, and gave me new life. And I'm here tonight to proclaim it, to proclaim the great things He has done.

He can save you, friend. Now I'm going to wrap up this meeting with a time for you to get right with God. Listen to me, friend.

If the Holy Spirit of God has been speaking to your heart tonight, it's high time you left that herd of swine and separate yourself and come to Christ Jesus for salvation in pardon of sins. He can deliver even you. He can cleanse you and clothe you with His robe of righteousness.

Don't run with that herd of swine, friend. Young person, come out from among them. Leave those friends behind.

Come out of your hog wallow of sin that doesn't satisfy. Only Jesus can truly satisfy the hungry heart. Listen to me, friends.

Jesus Christ stepped out of heaven to come to earth so we can go up there. He came doing good, healing the sick, giving sight to the blind, feeding the hungry, and raising the dead to life. Yet what happened? Wicked men cried, away with Him.

They arrested Him and beat Him and spit on Him and blindfolded Him and then slapped Him with the palms of their hands saying, prophesy who slapped you. Then they stripped Him and whipped Him and led Him to a place called Calvary where they crucified Him and nailed Him to a cross. Look at that blessed man on the cross.

Do you see Him there lifted up from the earth? He says, If I be lifted up, I will draw a man to me. Look at that man on the cross, friend. He is bleeding from His head, from a crown of thorns.

He is bleeding from His hands. He is bleeding from His feet, from the nails hammered into His innocent flesh. He is bleeding from His side, from a spear that pierced Him.

His blood's running all down that cross. Look at that man on that cross, dying for sins. He is my substitute for sin.

I got saved when Christ laid down His life and applied it to me. And now God the Father can look at me and say, When I see the blood, when I see the blood, because, friend, when a common day of judgment fast approaches, where all men and women will be held up against the strict, pure law of God, and all will fail that test because all have sinned, you must stand there in the merits of another, the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, and the life.

No man cometh unto the Father but by me. Look at that man on the cross, friend. Listen to him as he says, I am the bread of life.

He that cometh to me shall never hunger, and he that believeth on me shall never thirst. There may be someone here tonight who's like that man from the tombs, bound with sin and needing to be delivered. You may be so sick of sin, friend, that you're tired of dying, but you're tired of living too.

Come to Christ, friend, and ask Him to set you free. Come lay your burden of sin down at His nail-pierced feet. God says, Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth, for I am God, and there is none else.

Look unto Jesus, friend, and as I sing this hymn, come to Him and seek pardon from sin. What can wash away my sin? Nothing but the blood of Jesus. What can make me whole again? Nothing but the blood of Jesus.

O precious is the flow that makes me white as snow. No other fount I know. Nothing but the blood of Jesus.

For my pardon this I see. Nothing but the blood of Jesus. For my cleansing this my plea.

Nothing but the blood of Jesus. O precious is the flow that makes me white as snow. No other fount I know.

Nothing but the blood of Jesus.