Over the recent years, I have spent a lot of time reading the Bible, both for the purpose of strengthening my own moral and spiritual backbone, but also for the purpose of researching a number of books I’ve written. I’ve actually read a few different translations of the Bible, including the New International Version, King James Version and, more recently, the Good News Translation Version.
In the Good News Translation version, I was recently reading the Gospel of Mark and I noticed something in Chapter 5 that caught my eye. This is the chapter when Jesus performs an exorcism on a man in Gerasa who lives in a cave and is tormented by demons. What I found interesting about this particular translation was that the word used for the name of the group of demons inside this man was different. In most translations I was familiar with, the demons call themselves “Legion” and this seems to be the word used in the majority of Bible translations. However, the Good News Translation didn’t use the word “Legion”. Instead, it referred to the gang of demons as “Mob”.
So Jesus asked him, “What is your name!” The man answered, “My name is ‘Mob’ – there are so many of us!” – Mark 5:9
I was really struck by this particular translation because ‘mob’ is such a timely word these days. Over the past couple of years especially, we’ve seen the rise of the mob, whether it’s in the digital world (i.e. the “Twitter mob” that is out to cancel everyone) or in the actual physical world, like what we saw over the summer of 2020 when rioters hijacked George Floyd protests and destroyed cities and towns. Of course, I would be remiss if I did not also mention the elephant in the room, which is the January 6th Capitol Hill mob, although the events of January 6th are still in question, in my opinion. January 6th, from what I see, was a giant—pardon my French—clusterfuck of a situation, a combination of a pro-Trump mob angry over a stolen election, then you throw in an Antifa and a John Sullivan-led Black Lives Matter mob posing as Trump supporters for whatever reason[1], but then you have undercover FBI agents[2], what-appear-to-be professional agitators[3] and an underprepared Capitol Police force told to stand down and allow protesters to enter the Capitol building, which not only exacerbated the mob situation but perhaps manufactured it as though it were a false-flag operation, essentially one big set-up to make Trump and his supporters look bad and launch a new, open-ended war on domestic terror, not unlike what happened after 9/11 with the war on (foreign) terror, but, alas, I digress.[4]
The point I’m getting at here is that, over the past couple of years or so, we have seen the rise of the Mob. We saw it in Minneapolis, post-George Floyd, and then it spread to virtually every other American city, including my own city of Boston where there was egregious looting on Sunday night May 31st 2020, all of which was captured live on local news television, though the tapes have never seen the light of day since. We also saw the mob in Kenosha, Wisconsin after the shooting of Jacob Blake. Heck, we even recently saw the mob at what-was-supposed to be a fun event called the “Astroworld” music festival in Houston, Texas, when a mob got so out of control that 10 people got crushed and/or suffocated to death during rapper Travis Scott’s performance.[5]
While it’s true that these mobs consist of a mass of actual people that are hysterical and not thinking very clearly, Mark 5:9 tells us that what’s really happening in the spiritual dimension is that an army of demons have congregated in mass, taken power and authority over a group of human beings, and this army of demons named ‘Mob’ is looking to create chaos and destroy everything in its path. Or, to use more crass terms that I feel may be necessary, Mob is looking to FUCK…SHIT…UP.
Indeed, Mob is out to destroy basically anything and everything that is righteous and good and true. Perhaps more than anything else, though, Mob is out to destroy Justice. God’s Justice, that is. And this latter effort was on full display during the recent Kyle Rittenhouse trial in Kenosha, Wisconsin.
Now, I admit that I don’t know everything about the Kyle Rittenhouse case. I don’t have much of a life, but I at least have enough of a life to have made it impossible for me to follow the Rittenhouse trial from start to finish and evaluate every single piece of evidence. I would assume that most people are in the same boat as myself—that is, they didn’t have time to follow the whole trial—the only difference is that so many people out there pretend that they are experts who have carefully evaluated all the evidence when they are, in fact, not experts at all and, instead, rather ignorant.
With all that being said, my general summation of what happened with the case of Kyle Rittenhouse was this:
On August 23, 2020, Kenosha police officers shot a black man named Jacob Blake. He was supposedly reaching into a car to get a knife when they shot him, but the police shot Blake seven times in the back, which seemed excessive to many people, especially the black community. Many of these people consequently exercised their first amendment right to protest what they saw as excessive force, took to the streets and peacefully made their voices heard. But then a mob of opportunistic, low-life losers came and hijacked the protest. They wanted to destroy Kenosha, loot the stores and burn the buildings down. Kyle Rittenhouse felt a connection to this city because his father and other family members lived there. He wanted to stop people from destroying a city he loved. So, on the third night of rioting (August 25th), he went to Kenosha armed with an assault rifle, which is legal in Wisconsin (rifles and shotguns are legal for 16 and 17-year-olds to carry openly in Wisconsin due to hunting laws), and tried to do what he could to stop the city from being destroyed. Part of why he did this was because Wisconsin governor Tony Evers and other local officials weren’t doing much to stop the destruction. They were basically allowing it to happen.
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| Rittenhouse the night of August 25, 2021 |
Anyway, while Kyle was protecting a car dealership and trying to put out fires, the mob of low-life losers saw what he was doing and didn’t like how Kyle was trying to stop their destruction, so they became hostile and attacked him. He shot one of these angry men named Joseph Rosenbaum (a white man with a troubled past), then was chased by the mob and Rittenhouse shot another two men (also white) named Anthony Huber and Gaige Grosskreutz (both with troubled pasts). Rosenbaum and Huber died while Grosskreutz got shot in the arm and survived. Rittenhouse then managed to get away from the mob, then told the police what happened, the police told him to back off and go home, basically, because they were currently concentrating on controlling the mob, but then Rittenhouse turned himself into the police later that night.
Again, that’s my general summation of what happened. You basically had peaceful protests regarding racial injustice that were hijacked by a mob of low-lifes and losers out to create chaos and destruction, a seventeen-year-old kid who, yes, probably should have just left well enough alone, was there to try to help clean up and put a stop to the destruction, the mob turned on him and he had to kill two men who were attacking him. To be fair, the latter two men that Kyle shot (Huber and Grosskreutz) supposedly thought Kyle was an active shooter and this may very well be true based on the chaos and confusion of the whole night. However, I’m not sure the active shooter claim completely holds up, since Kyle was running away from the mob and on the defense as opposed to running towards the mob on the offense. But, again, there was a lot of chaos and confusion, which is always the case with a mob.
Now, the above summation is perhaps an oversimplification of what happened the night of August 25th 2020, there are likely some details to add here and there, but, from what I saw, Kyle Rittenhouse justifiably killed two attackers in self-defense and I think my summation of what happened is accurate because a jury of 12 men and women who actually sat through the Rittenhouse trial from start to finish and carefully evaluated each piece of evidence came to the same conclusion as I did.
Despite the facts, however, the media Mob brought the word ‘hysteria’ to a whole new level, spewed out a torrent of misinformation regarding the case, tried to convince everyone that Kyle Rittenhouse was a white supremacist and also basically tried to turn the trial into a race war. Heck, it wasn’t just the media, though; even president Joe Biden (then candidate Joe Biden) himself referred to Kyle Rittenhouse as a white supremacist in a September 2020 Tweet![6] Basically, what the media and Joe were insinuating was, “If you believe Kyle was acting in self-defense, you are a white supremacist just like Kyle. You are also an incredibly racist and horrible human being.” This, of course, is not rational behavior. It’s irrational Mob behavior. It’s behavior based on feelings, not facts. I feel Kyle is a white supremacist, therefore it’s true [even though all three men he shot were white, not black]. A feelings-based reality is not reality; it’s unreality.
Indeed, the reason why the Kyle Rittenhouse trial became so important really had nothing to do with whether Kyle was guilty of murder or acting in self-defense (although that was important to determine, obviously). There was something much larger going on and that was the war between Justice and Mob Justice, which is essentially a war between reality and unreality and, even broader, a war between God and Mob. The Legion of demons that is Mob was trying to make a big move and that move was to take down God’s rule of law, perhaps once and for all.
In fact, I think this is why the trial became so nationally (and even internationally) fascinating to people. Because many people knew, at least on a subconscious level if not a conscious one, that this was spiritual warfare, plain and simple … between Mob—yes, the very same gang of demons that Jesus exorcised from the tormented man in Gerasa—and God. And, boy, Mob put up one hell of a fight. There was so much pressure and intimidation on the jurors to do the wrong thing and rule the way Mob wanted them to rule. This intimidation reached an absurd level when a photographer from MSNBC got caught stalking the jurors’ bus on the way to the courthouse during the week of deliberation.[7] Was he going to photograph the jurors so all the world would know their identities? Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe it was an indirect threat. Maybe it was intimidation. Either way, the message was basically, “If you don’t do what we want, jurors, we will put your identities out to the world and then you’re going to be fucked.” The judge overseeing the Rittenhouse trial had to consequently ban MSNBC from his courtroom for the remainder of the trial.
In the end, the jury did not cave to Mob…thankfully. They did the right thing and chose actual Justice over Mob Justice. However, the Rittenhouse trial will still go down in history as a reminder of how close we came to Mob Justice taking over actual Justice and also how close we came to the demonic Mob overthrowing truth and righteousness and reality and, yes, even God Himself. Mob knew this was its chance to make a key advance on the spiritual warfare front and it pulled out every stop at its disposal to give God a significant blow. But, in the end, Mob lost this battle and God won. And although this is usually what happens (i.e. God wins), we would all be lying if we didn’t admit that this battle was one hell of a nail-biter. I think, for many of us, there were several moments during the trial and especially during the week of deliberation (which took four days) where we thought Mob could actually…possibly…just maybe…pull out a win.
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MATT BURNS is the author of THE WOMAN AND THE DRAGON, a novella inspired by the Book of Revelation. He’s also published many novels (Johnny Cruise, Supermarket Zombies! et al.) as well as memoirs (Garage Movie: My Adventures Making Weird Films, Bostonwood et al.). Check out these books (and many more) on his Amazon author page HERE.
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[1] Pappert, Tom. “Antifa Activist Who Sold Footage of January 6 to CNN, NBC, Had $90,000 Seized By Feds.” National File, 22 May 2021, https://nationalfile.com/antifa-activist-who-sold-footage-of-january-6-to-cnn-nbc-had-90000-seized-by-feds/.
[2] Beattie, Darren. “Unindicted Co-Conspirators in 1/6 Cases Raise Disturbing Questions of Federal Foreknowledge.” Revolver, 14 June 2021, https://www.revolver.news/2021/06/federal-foreknowledge-jan-6-unindicted-co-conspirators-raise-disturbing-questions/.
[3] Hoft, Joe. “DEEP STATE DOJ and Corrupt Politicians Are Refusing to Release Thousands of Hours of Video of Jan 6 at the Capitol – Is This Short VIDEO the Reason Why?” Gateway Pundit, 11 June 2021, https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/06/deep-state-doj-corrupt-politicians-refusing-release-thousands-hours-video-jan-6-capital-short-video-reason/.
[4] Carlson, T & Downey, S. (2021). Patriot Purge [streaming]. Tucker Carlson Originals.
[5] Scott’s performance, by the way, was filled with demonic imagery and symbolism, almost as though the festival was meant to be one giant satanic ritual, so maybe it’s not a surprise that such an intense mob formed and crushed ten people.
[6] Casiano, Louis. “Rittenhouse could have potential defamation case against Biden over White supremacist tweet, expert says.” Fox News, 19 November 2021, https://www.foxnews.com/us/rittenhouse-defamation-biden-tweet.
[7] Zempel, Kylee. “MSNBC’s History of Doxxing Normal People Shadows Attempt to Follow Rittenhouse Jury.” The Federalist, 19 November 2021, https://thefederalist.com/2021/11/19/msnbcs-history-of-doxxing-normal-people-shadows-attempt-to-follow-rittenhouse-jury/.
