Virtually all scholars agree that Jesus did one very risky thing: he exorcised demons. Exorcism was an illicit activity in the Roman world, so why would Jesus risk condemnation, arrest, and even death for the sake of the demon-possessed? Some point to his compassion. Roger Busse, a forty-year veteran of risk analysis and a graduate of Harvard Divinity School, has another answer from the world in which he lives: risk assessment.
Using risk analysis, Busse provides a new approach that recovers the specific charismatic practices, sayings, and parables that exorcist Jesus' employed in his deliberate and dangerous strategy to drive Satan from the land and reestablish the kingdom of God. To Be Near the Fire offers a new portrait of Jesus and the origins of Christianity.