The Man, the Land, and the Demons

Mark 5 Revisited, The Territorial Dimension of Your Deliverance

Theme

Territory · Deliverance · Assignment · Expulsion · Land Deliverers · City Possessors

Scripture

Mark 5:1-20 · Mark 5:10 · Luke 4:18 · Isaiah 9:2 · Matthew 11:21-23 · John 5:25

Beloved, hear me as we cross into Part 2.

We have spent the first half of this book on the inward work, the breaking, the drawing, the pressing, the receiving. That was necessary, friend. You cannot give what you have not received. But the Holy Ghost did not deliver Legion just so Legion could have a quiet evening at home. The Holy Ghost delivered Legion and the country he was bound in. And that is the conversation Part 2 wants to have with you.

Watch this, in Mark 5, when Jesus arrived at the country of the Gadarenes, the demons did not just beg Him not to torment them. They begged Him for something more revealing. They begged Him not to send them out of the country. Read that line again, beloved. "And he besought him much that he would not send them away out of the country" (Mark 5:10). The demons had two concerns that day. They cared about themselves, yes. But they also cared about the land. They had a stake in Gadara. They were not just tormenting one man in the tombs. They were ruling a region through him.

Did you catch that? The man in the tombs was not the whole story. The man in the tombs was the access point through which demons were administering a territory. Your deliverance, beloved, and the deliverance of every reader of this book, is not just personal. It is territorial. There is a land somewhere that is bound right now because somebody in that land is bound. And when that one person is delivered, the spirits over the land lose the right of administration they had been exercising through the bondage.

Hear me, friend. You are not just a deliverance case. You are a land deliverer. And this chapter will not let you settle for the smaller story. Demons fear leaving the country because the country was theirs through you. Take the country back.

Beloved, look closely at the negotiation in Mark 5:10. Most of us read this passage with our attention fixed on the man, the chains, the tombs, the swine, and we miss the negotiation entirely. "He besought him much." That word much is heavy. The demons were intensely invested in this conversation. And what were they investing their pleading in? Staying in the country. Not freedom from torment. Not a moment of mercy. They wanted territory rights preserved.

Why? Because demons are territorial spirits. They do not just want to attack individuals. They want to administer regions through individuals. The man in the tombs was their legal access point into the country of the Gadarenes. As long as he was bound and dwelling in those tombs, the spirits could keep operating in the city through him. He was the connection point. Take him out of the equation, and the connection breaks. The country becomes legally accessible to a different administration. That is what the demons were begging Jesus to prevent.

And here is the part of the story that breaks my heart, friend. No man in Gadara prayed for the country. The men of the city did not come out to Jesus and say, Lord, our country has been overrun. Deliver the land. Nobody pleaded for the territory. So when the swine ran off the cliff and the herdsmen reported it, the response of the city was not, Lord, do it again, do it bigger, deliver everything in this land. The response was, they began to pray him to depart out of their coasts (Mark 5:17). They begged Him to leave.

Beloved, hear me. No man prayed for the territory, so Jesus left them. The land could have been completely free that day. Demons were on the run. The administration was breaking. One regional intercessor in that city could have asked Jesus to stay and finish what He had started. Nobody did. The whole country missed its deliverance because there was no intercessor pleading for the land, only intercessors pleading for the swine they had just lost.

Watch what Jesus did next, beloved. He left the country physically, yes, because the people had asked Him to. But He did not leave the country without representation. He gave Gadara a man. The same man who had been the demons' access point became the Lord's access point. The same body the enemy had ruled the territory through became the body the Holy Ghost would now publish the territory through. Where there had been a stronghold, there was now an evangelist. Same address. Different administration.

Beloved, that is the strategy of heaven. When Jesus cannot remain in a place physically, and He could not, He had other cities to go to, He plants a delivered man in the place. And the delivered man carries the same Jesus, the same anointing, the same authority, the same fire. The city that begged Him to leave still had Him after He left. They had Him through that man. They had Him through that testimony. They had Him through that mouth publishing in Decapolis what He had done.

Hear me, friend, you are that man. You are that woman. Wherever Jesus delivered you, He did not just deliver you to make you feel better. He delivered you to plant you in the territory as His evangelist, His witness, His advance team, His fire-bearer. The land that drove Him out is the land you are commissioned to bring Him back into through your life.

And do not say to yourself, I am not enough for a whole territory. Friend, the delivered man of Gadara was, the day before, the most demonised man in his region. He had been so wild that no man could tame him (Mark 5:4). Chains had been broken on him. The tombs had been his address. He was the least likely candidate in that whole country for a regional assignment. But Jesus gave the territory him. That is heaven's economy. Heaven assigns the city to the one the city had most underestimated. He uses the rejected stone (Psalm 118:22).

Beloved, watch the language Isaiah uses. The people that walked in darkness. Not just the people in despair. Not just the people in confusion. The people who were walking in something, moving through a substance that had geography. They that dwell in the land of the shadow of death. Darkness is not abstract in this verse. Darkness is a land. It has borders. It has terrain. It has zip codes. It has cities and streets that have been administered by darkness for generations. And what is the answer to darkness with geography? Light has shined. Light is the only thing dense enough to push darkness out of a territory. You cannot argue darkness out. You cannot strategise darkness out. You cannot legislate darkness out. You can only shine darkness out. And the light that shines is not generic, it is the Spirit of the Lord upon me, as Jesus quoted from Isaiah 61 in Luke 4:18. The anointing on a delivered believer is the geography-changing light that the dark territory has been waiting on.

Now look at Luke 4:18 again, carefully. Jesus said He was anointed to preach deliverance to the captives, yes, personal. But He also said, to set at liberty them that are bruised. The word bruised in the Greek is thrauo, meaning crushed, shattered, broken in pieces, oppressed. That is not just personal pain. That is territorial oppression. That is the bruise of an entire community that has been ground under demonic administration for a generation. Jesus was anointed to set those territories at liberty.

Beloved, the anointing on you was patterned after the anointing on Him. As He is, so are we in this world (1 John 4:17). The same light. The same geography-shifting power. The same mandate to set bruised territories at liberty. Some of you have been praying for your healing for years and the prayer has been working. Now begin to pray for your territory. The same anointing that broke the yoke on your life is built to break the yoke on your land, if you will turn the lamp outward.

Beloved, hear me, there are land deliverers, city possessors, and country prophets in this book right now who do not yet know that is what they are. They have been treating their assignment as personal-only because nobody told them their deliverance had a regional dimension. They have been praying inward when heaven was waiting for them to pray outward. So let me say it plainly, friend. You are a land deliverer. Some of you reading this paragraph are responsible, under God, for whole districts the Lord has assigned to your prayer life.

Let me give you four marks of a land deliverer so you can recognise the call on you.

One, you carry a burden that exceeds yourself. When you pray, the prayer keeps drifting beyond your own house. You find yourself weeping for the school down the road. You cannot drive past certain neighbourhoods without your spirit groaning. You wake up in the night with names of streets, names of regions, names of cities on your spirit. That, beloved, is not random. That is regional burden. The Holy Ghost is assigning you geography. Pay attention to where the weight falls.

Two, your deliverance has a regional pattern. When you trace where Jesus has set you free, you notice it is not random, it overlaps territorially with strongholds you can name. He freed you from anxiety, and you live in a city wrestling with anxiety. He freed you from a generational pattern, and the families on your street carry that pattern. He freed you from one of the dominant local oppressions. That overlap is your commission. He delivered you into the territory, not just out of it. Your healing is now the territory's medicine.

Three, you have heard the voice of the Son of God and arisen. John 5:25, "The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God: and they that hear shall live." The mark of a land deliverer is that the dead-things in their life have been resurrected by the voice of Jesus. Their identity is no longer being negotiated by the spirits over the land. Their name is no longer being answered by demons. They have heard, and they have arisen. That arising is the prerequisite for the regional assignment.

Four, you carry a willingness to be the only one. No man pleaded for the country of Gadara, beloved. Not one. The whole region missed its deliverance because not one intercessor stood in the gap. Land deliverers are the kind of people who, when they realise nobody else is standing for the territory, do not say, somebody else will do it. They say, Lord, then I will. They are willing to be the only voice if that is what it takes.

Beloved, the great encounters in your life are not just for you. They are for reference and great works in your land. Look at what Jesus said in Matthew 11:21, if the mighty works which were done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented. Watch the Lord's logic. He says the mighty works had been done in you, past tense. The works had landed. The deposit had been made. And He held the territory accountable for the works that had been done in it.

Friend, what does that mean for your land? It means the mighty works that have been done in you over the years of your walk with Christ are now spiritually deposited in the territory you have been living in. Heaven holds the territory accountable for the testimony it has been brushing up against. The crusade you were in. The deliverance you walked through. The prayer that broke off you. The healing that came on you. The marriage that was rescued. The child that was reclaimed. Those works are now territorially present in your land, and the territory will answer for whether it has responded with repentance, or with rejection.

So what is the call, beloved? Command the expulsion of strangers. That is the language Jesus used over Legion, come out of the man, thou unclean spirit (Mark 5:8). Strangers are the spirits that have been administering your territory illegally. Their administration was always temporary. The original deed of your land belongs to the Lord (Psalm 24:1). They have been squatters. And squatters do not leave because of polite request. They leave because of authority spoken in the name of Jesus.

Hear me, the same authority Jesus used over Legion has been given to you. Behold, I give unto you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy (Luke 10:19). The expulsion of strangers from your territory is not a prayer of asking. It is a command of authority. You do not beg the squatter to leave. You evict the squatter in the name of the rightful Owner. I command the expulsion of strangers from my city, from my family, from my workplace, from my ministry, from my street, in Jesus' name.

Beloved, let me lead you in this declaration right now. Stop reading silently. Read this out loud over your territory. Say it slowly and mean every word —

Father, in the name of Jesus, I receive my full assignment. I am not just a deliverance case. I am a land deliverer. I am a city possessor. I am a country prophet over the territory You have set me in. I refuse to read this chapter and treat the regional dimension as somebody else's. The mighty works that have been done in me have been deposited in my land, and I rise to steward the deposit.

Holy Ghost, burn through me for the freedom of my territory. I yield my body, my soul, and my spirit to You, come into me fully. Let Your voice sound over my land. Let every dead thing in my territory hear the voice of the Son of God and arise. I command the expulsion of strangers from my city, my family, my workplace, my ministry, my street, my generation. Every demon that pleaded with You to stay in the country, leave now. The Lord rebuke you, Satan, in the name of Jesus.

Beloved, do not read Chapter 9 yet. Stop here. Stand up. Walk to a window or a doorway where you can see the territory the Lord has set you in. Speak the expulsion of strangers over it out loud. Name the city. Name the street. Name the family line. Speak the rebuke. Then thank Him for the regional assignment, even if you do not yet feel its size.

And this week, do this, spend twenty minutes on three different days walking or driving through your territory while praying. Not in your house. In the land. Let your feet carry the anointing into the places the enemy has been holding. Every place the sole of your foot shall tread upon, that have I given unto you (Joshua 1:3). The anointing on you was never engineered to stay in the prayer closet.

You are not a personal deliverance case. You are a land deliverer. Pray for your territory.