<p>11:15 <i>But some of them said- </i>The Pharisees (Mt.). Their comment appears to have been made in very hot blood, for it was logically contradictory to claim that someone who cast out demons must therefore be in league with the prince of the demons; because their own sons (either literally or in the sense of their disciples) claimed to cast out demons. And if Jesus was actually on the side of the prince of demons, why then was he as it were fighting for the other side by casting out demons. Such gaping error in logic was exactly what the Pharisees were constantly careful to avoid; but their intense jealousy of the Lord led them to make this logical error. Again we note that the Lord's style was not so much to directly state the errors of his opponents, but to work on the assumption that their beliefs were correct- and to then follow those beliefs to their logical conclusions, thus showing how those positions contradicted themselves to the point they could not be true. This is one explanation for the use of the language of demons in the Gospels, even though demons don't in fact exist.</p><p><i>By Beelzebub the prince of the demons he casts out demons</i>- By the instrumentality of Beelzebub. They were driven to assume that the Lord was in league with some higher power in order to perform His miracles. If it wasn't the Holy Spirit of God- it had to be by some other power, and the only option in their theology was some form of the Satan myth. Their logical desperation is a reflection of the undeniable nature of the Lord's miracles (as in Acts 4:16). Any who claim to be able to do miracles through the Holy Spirit should likewise be producing healings which even their most sceptical opponents cannot deny are miracles; but that feature is not seen in many claims of healings today. When accused of being in league with &lsquo;satan&rsquo;, the Lord didn&rsquo;t read them a charge of blasphemy. He reasoned instead that a thief cannot bind a strong man; and likewise He couldn&rsquo;t bind &lsquo;satan&rsquo; unless He were stronger than Satan (cp. Mk. 3:23-27). He doesn&rsquo;t take the tack that &lsquo;Satan / Beelzebub / demons&rsquo; don&rsquo;t exist; He showed instead that He was evidently stronger than any such being or force, to the point that belief in such a concept was meaningless. Faith must rather be in Him alone.</p><p>The Jews accused the Lord of being in league with the prince of the demons, Beelzebub. His comment was that if the family / house of Satan was so divided, then Satan &ldquo;has an end&rdquo; (Mk. 3:26). His approach was &lsquo;OK you believe in demons, Beelzebub etc. Well if that&rsquo;s the case, then according to the extension of your logic, Satan will soon come to an end, will cease existence. That&rsquo;s the bottom line. As it happens, I am indeed &lsquo;binding the strong man&rsquo;, rendering Satan powerless, making him &lsquo;have an end&rsquo;, and so whichever way you look at it, believing in demons or not, the bottom line is that My miracles demonstrate that effectively Satan is powerless and not an item now&rsquo;. The way the New Testament is written reflects the same approach. When the Lord was alone with His disciples, He explained further: &ldquo;If they have called the Master of the House i.e. Jesus &lsquo;Beelzebub&rsquo;, how much more shall they call them of his household?&rdquo; i.e. the disciples (Mt. 10:25). By saying this, the Lord was clarifying that of course He didn&rsquo;t&nbsp;<i>really&nbsp;</i>mean that He was part of the Satan family, working against Satan to destroy the entire family. Rather was He and His family quite separate from the Satan family. But He didn&rsquo;t make that clarification to the Jewish crowds &ndash; He simply used their idea and reasoned with them on their own terms. Note in passing how the Jews actually thought Jesus was Beelzebub, or Satan. This would be one explanation for their mad passion to kill Him; for those labelled &lsquo;Satan&rsquo; were hunted to their death in such societies, as seen later in the witch hunts of the middle ages. The Jews say Jesus as a false miracle worker, a false Messiah, a bogus Son of God &ndash; all characteristics of their view of &lsquo;Satan&rsquo;. Some centuries later, the Jewish sage Maimonides described Jesus in terms of the antichrist: &ldquo;Daniel had already alluded to him when he presaged the downfall of a wicked one and a heretic among the Jews who would endeavour to destroy the Law, claim prophecy for himself, make pretences to miracles, and allege that he is the Messiah&rdquo; (<i>Maimonides&rsquo; Epistle to Yemen</i>). It&rsquo;s been suggested that the way the Jewish rabbinical writings call Him&nbsp;<i>Yeshu</i>&nbsp;is an acronym for the Hebrew expression&nbsp;<i>yemach shemo vezichro</i>&ndash; &ldquo;May his name and memory be obliterated&rdquo;). This was the very Jewish definition of Satan. They saw Jesus as Satan himself; hence they were so insistent on slaying Him. Yet by the deft twist of Divine providence, it was through the death of Jesus that the&nbsp;<i>real&nbsp;</i>Devil (i.e. the power of sin) was in fact slain (Heb. 2:14). To those with perceptive enough minds to see it, yet once again the Jewish ideas had been turned back upon them to reveal the real nature of the Devil to them, within their own frames of reference and terminology. Likewise Beelzebub means literally &lsquo;the lord of the house&rsquo;; and the Lord Jesus alludes to this in describing Himself as the Master of the House of God.&nbsp;</p><p>Judaism had taken over the surrounding pagan notion of a personal &lsquo;Satan&rsquo;. And the Lord Jesus and the Gospel writers use this term, but in the way they use it, they redefine it. The parable of the Lord Jesus binding the &ldquo;strong man&rdquo; &ndash; the Devil &ndash; was really to show that the &ldquo;Devil&rdquo; as they understood it was now no more, and his supposed Kingdom now taken over by that of Christ. The last Gospel, John, doesn&rsquo;t use the term in the way the earlier Gospels do. He defines what the earlier writers called &ldquo;the Devil&rdquo; as actual people, such as the Jews or the brothers of Jesus, in their articulation of an adversarial &lsquo;satanic&rsquo; position to Jesus.</p><p><i>Archon</i>, &quot;the first&quot; &quot;prince&quot;, would imply that Beelzebub was also a demon, the &quot;first&quot; or leading one. Thus the fallacy of their argument is the more apparent- if Beelzebub really existed, why would he cast out his own fellow demons?</p>