The Existence of Angels

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Here you go.
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These are new handouts.
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Of course, everyone will need one.
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Oftentimes, I come in on Wednesday nights with great aspirations as to how far I'm going to get.
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I'll come in and say, yes, we're going to do the whole handout tonight.
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And then right before I come up, as I'm looking over my notes one more time, I say, I got too much to say on that.
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I can't get through that whole thing.
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So just know that I don't put these handouts together intending to make you have to hold onto them for weeks at a time.
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I really do intend for you to go through the whole thing in one time.
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But I am afraid that as I was looking at tonight's handout, I'm afraid we're not going to get past Roman numeral I.
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But we may, depending on the, and by that, I mean the whole section of Roman numeral I, not just the I, but the A, B, and C.
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We are starting tonight on the subject of angels.
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The technical term for this section is angelology.
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I first heard that term when I was in seminary, and I took the class.
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And I giggled when I heard it.
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Someone says, well, next semester we're offering angelology.
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And I thought that they were kidding, because it just sounded like sort of a silly, you know, you can put anology on the end of anything.
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And then thereafter, it was demonology and Satanology, which were subsets of angelology.
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And I said, wow, this is serious business.
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We not only have the primary, we have the secondary and the tertiary studies.
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So I've sort of tried to simplify it.
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Rather than really calling it angelology, even though that is on your sheet, I simply am saying it is the study of angels.
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So it's what theology means.
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And we're going to look at the study of angels in two parts.
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We are going to look at what the Bible describes as the elect angels.
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And we will define that later, but just to give you the overview of the next several weeks, we're going to look at the elect angels.
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And then we are going to look at the fallen angels.
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And I want to read to you from the systematic theology, which is written by Henry Clarence Thiessen.
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And if you're ever looking for a systematic theology, I would recommend Thiessen's work to you.
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It's very well done.
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It's very well outlined.
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And he does include a section on angels, which not every systematic theology does include a section on angels.
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Some bypass it completely, depending on how extensive the work.
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Yes.
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Thiessen is T-H-I-E-S-S-E-N.
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Henry Clarence Thiessen.
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And this is his introduction to angelology.
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The doctrine of angels follows logically the doctrine of God, for the angels are primarily ministers of God's providence.
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Although the scriptures have much to say about angels, there is today a very general disregard, often amounting to a rejection of the doctrine.
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Various things have contributed to this attitude.
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There is first the Gnostic worship of angels.
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Then there are the often foolish speculations of scholasticism of the middle ages.
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Then there is the exaggerated belief in witchcraft in more recent times.
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And then finally the rise in demon and Satan worship of our own day.
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Yet there are many reasons for believing in angels.
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And he gives several, and we're gonna go over those later, so I won't read the rest.
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But essentially what he's saying is this.
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He's saying, although the Bible says a lot about angels, you don't hear much about angels, except from the people who are teaching wrongly about angels.
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And that's a problem.
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Angels make an appearance on the biblical stage in both the Old and the New Testaments.
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But when it comes to who they are, when it comes to what they are, when it comes to where they came from, there is a lot of confusion.
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Part of the confusion stems from the fact that the Bible gives us precious little detail about those questions.
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In fact, we're gonna see in a few moments, the Bible really doesn't give us a lot of detail at all about the questions of who they are, what they do or where they're from.
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It just simply says they are.
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And so we're gonna talk about that.
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And I wanna quote now from James Boyce.
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This is another commentary, another systematic theology rather.
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And Jim Boyce is well-known and he wrote this.
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He said, it is interesting in view of the Bible's testimony of the existence of spirits, angels, that the mythologies of ancient civilizations also claim their existence.
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Babylonian mythology portrayed the spirits as gods who brought messages from the world of the gods above and to earth beneath.
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Greek and Roman mythology had gods and demigods visiting the earth.
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So it is with virtually all ancient civilizations.
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Critics of the Bible sometimes see its references to a spirit world as evidence that the Bible is mythology.
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That is having no basis in actual fact.
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But it is equally possible that the mythologies actually preserve a distorted memory of an early experience of the race.
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That possibility is enhanced even for non-Christians by the striking current renewal in the interest of the spirit world.
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You ever hear somebody say they're spiritual? People say, I'm not religious, I'm spiritual.
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Or you ask them if they're a Christian.
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Well, I'm not a Christian, but I'm a spiritual person.
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A good response, not that we have to be ugly with people, but a good funny little quip.
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If somebody says, I'm not religious, I'm spiritual, say, well, demons are spiritual too.
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Can we be a little more specific? You know, if you're just claiming spirituality, let's kind of hammer that out.
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Let's nail that down a little tighter.
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What do you mean when you say you are spiritual? So we're going to talk about that idea.
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We're gonna talk about the spiritual realm during this series.
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We're gonna talk about things that are difficult because again, the Bible provides very little information.
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In fact, much of what we have in our contemporary theories about angels come not from the Bible, but from people's stories.
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In fact, how many of you have ever read Billy Graham's book on angels? I read it years and years ago.
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In fact, I read it for the angelology class that I took.
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And one of the things he said at the beginning of his book on angels is he said, when he sat to write a book on angels, he realized he didn't have much information to draw from.
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There just wasn't a lot of books out there on the subject.
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And because of that, and again, I'm not necessarily saying he was wrong, but a lot of the things that are in his book are simply stories of people who think that they have had experiences with angels.
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And he tells several stories that are very interesting, that are very moving, some incredibly emotionally charged, but at the end of the day, it's not biblical.
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It's experiential.
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It's from experience, not from scripture.
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And I'm not saying experience is worthless.
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Experience has value.
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But we first want to ask before we inquire, because I could ask any one of you, I could go around the room.
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In fact, some of you are here tonight because I'm talking about angels.
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This was the, you heard me say it, you're here tonight.
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I'm glad.
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But I could go around the room and you could tell me about a time in your life where you think you possibly engaged with someone that may have been an angel.
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Now you may or may not, but I tell you there, I've had so many times over the years of ministry where somebody comes up and says, you know what? I had this experience with this person.
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It was miraculous.
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I think they were an angel.
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And oftentimes they quote what? That verse that we entertain angels unaware, without knowing it and say, well, here, I think that was an experience, Pastor.
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And they tell me the story.
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And again, I'm not here to discount experience.
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Experience has value.
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And it very well may have been.
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But we don't start our theology with experience.
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We start our theology with Scripture.
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And then we ask the question, does our experience line up with Scripture? Or are we trying to force Scripture into our experience? I say that because I'm building to, this is part of the introduction, I'm building to a cautionary note.
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In fact, maybe I'll just write this.
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Caution, exclamation point, underline caution.
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We have to be careful about the conclusions we draw regarding angels, because some of the most dastardly and deadly of all bad theology can be traced back to someone's experience with an angel.
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I'll give you the best example I can think of.
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In the seventh century, a man named Muhammad believed that he was given the word of God by the angel Jibreel, which is the Arabic for Gabriel.
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He believed that he was visited by the angel Jibreel, and as a result, he was given the Quran, or the word of God, and that became the start of the nation of Islam, the Islamic people.
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Islam was started by a false angel, at least an expression, a claim, that he had been visited by an angel.
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Could have been psychosis, but I'm saying, he claimed to have been visited by an angel.
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Is that enough to make you see how dangerous it can be? I mean, we can go down the line.
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There's a man, a contemporary man, he is a false teacher.
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He is a dangerous faith healer.
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By dangerous, they're all dangerous, but this guy hits people.
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I mean, he's really dangerous, like physically.
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And he brags about it.
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Look him up, his name's Todd Bentley.
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He talks about knocking people over, kicking people in the face.
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I'm not exaggerating.
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He says he got all of this from an angel.
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And he'll tell you, there's a whole, his whole YouTube video of him talking about getting his power, getting his information, getting his gifting from an angel.
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What does the Apostle Paul say in Galatians 1.8? If anyone, even an angel from heaven, is preaching a gospel contrary to what I have preached to you, let him be accursed.
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Notice that Paul says, even if an angel gives you this information, if it is contrary to the word of God, if it is contrary to what you have been given in the gospel, even an angel doesn't have the ability to contradict the word of God.
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In fact, if he does, let him be accursed.
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That's a powerful thought.
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One, the implication is there's some bad angels out there trying to lead people in bad ways.
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Now, we can't prove it from the text because Paul's using a what if scenario.
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But again, going to Islam, going to Todd Bentley, going to the many others that we could list of people who have been falsely influenced by what we would call the devil's angels or fallen angels.
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We'll look at them in the weeks ahead.
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This is a serious subject of which we must take caution.
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And the caution is this.
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One, we ought to have a healthy respect and understanding of the subject.
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We ought to have a healthy respect and understanding of the subject.
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And two, we ought not have an unhealthy fear or fascination of the subject.
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So we ought to have a healthy respect and understanding, but we ought not to have an unhealthy fear.
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We ought not make, and when I say fear, I'm thinking more about like devils and demons.
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People make a big deal, you hear people all the time.
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It's the devil, it's the devil, it's the devil.
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And it becomes so overwhelming, they talk more about the devil, they talk about God.
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You ever been in churches, it's all the devil? It almost sounds like the Flip Wilson's preaching.
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You know, the devil made me do it? And it's always the devil? Or it's always demonic activities? I always like to tell people, what if it's just you? What if you just have an evil heart? What if you don't need the devil to make you any worse than you already are? Yeah, I mean, what if he's just helping you do what you already wanna do, you know? But that's a, again, getting ahead of myself.
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So we don't need to have an unhealthy fear.
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We need to understand because with understanding comes the ability to deal with the situation rather than an unhealthy fear.
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And we don't need to have an unhealthy fascination.
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Our whole life doesn't need to be spent trying to find the spirit world's interventions.
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They're there.
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We know they're there.
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If our eyes could be peeled back and we could see what was really happening in the spirit realm, we would be amazed.
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But we can't.
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There's only been a few people in scripture that there's only been the one experience that I can remember where the person actually got to see.
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We don't get that experience, but we know it's there.
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We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers.
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You know, these things that we don't see, that's the real wrestling.
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That's the real battle.
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So it's really there.
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So we need to have understanding.
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We need to have respect.
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We need not have unhealthy fear or unhealthy fascination.
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Karl Barth is controversial theologian to say the least.
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But Karl Barth in writing on the subject of theology wrote on the subject of angels, probably more than anyone.
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He just took that as one of his primary focuses.
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And this is what he said.
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He said that the study of angels is one of the most remarkable and the most difficult of all.
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Remarkable and difficult.
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Remarkable because it's amazing, but difficult because it really is a hard subject.
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So again, this is all this introduction tonight.
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I'm trying to introduce you to the idea.
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We didn't just come here tonight to talk about those little cherubs that we put on the Christmas tree or whatever.
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We're here to talk about the serious business of the heavenly hosts, God's messengers and God's enemies.
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The elect and the fallen of God's created spiritual realm.
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All right, so therein is my introduction to the doctrine of angels.
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Let's now look first at the existence of angels.
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The existence of angels is gonna be our focus for tonight.
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I have three blanks.
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I'd like to help you fill those in.
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So let's begin with the first one.
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The Bible assumes their existence.
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So that's the first answer is the word existence.
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The Bible assumes the existence of angels.
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Now, when I say that, what I mean is the Bible doesn't try to prove the existence of angels.
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It simply assumes they exist.
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If you remember when we studied the doctrine of God, when we began this whole series, I said the one thing you have to realize about the Bible is the Bible doesn't try to prove that God exists.
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The Bible starts with the assumption that God exists.
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In the beginning, God created, it doesn't say there's a being who is eternal and everlasting and he is without cause and the first cause of all things.
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He is the unmoved mover.
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It doesn't go into this whole teleological argument for the necessity of the existence of God.
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It just says, in the beginning, God, and that's it.
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No apologetics, just assumption.
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God exists.
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Well, the same attitude, scripturally speaking, is given to angels.
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It's just assumed that they exist.
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The words that are used in Hebrew, mahek, is the word for angel.
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Don't try to, it wouldn't be spelled right in English anyway, it's a Hebrew word.
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But the Greek word you probably can spell, it's angelos, and it just means messenger.
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Hebrew, it means messenger, and in Greek, it means messenger.
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And in English, it means messenger.
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Angel means a messenger.
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In fact, you guys are familiar with the word evangelism.
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What's the root word of evangelism? Angel.
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It's right in the middle.
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The word in Greek is oangelios.
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O, E, U, is the prefix that means good.
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Angelos means message.
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So oangelios is the good message, and that's what the word gospel means.
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It means good news.
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So the root word of evangelism is angel, or messenger, or message.
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So that's the word that is used.
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34 of the 66 books of the Bible mention angels.
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So just a little bit more than half of the books of the Bible, or 66 books, 34 mention their existence.
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100 times they are referenced in the Old Testament, over 100 times, and over 160 times are they mentioned in the New Testament.
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So they are not an Old Testament reality.
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They are not a New Testament reality.
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They are a biblical reality.
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They are a biblical assumption.
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Christ himself references their existence.
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If you wanna write the scripture, just a few that you can go back later and look at.
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Christ references their existence in Matthew 24, verse 31, and in Luke chapter nine, verse 26.
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Now, we are gonna look up some of these passages, but these here are just simple, just references to angels by Jesus himself.
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He taught their existence in Matthew 24, 31, Luke 9, 26, and several other places.
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In fact, what does the Bible say happened after Jesus was baptized? Immediately after Jesus was baptized, where'd he go? He went into the wilderness to be tempted by Satan.
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By the way, if anybody ever wonders, does Satan exist? Which we're gonna get to that in a few weeks.
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The assumption of Satan is so, it's from the third chapter of Genesis, the serpent.
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It's assumed, not argued, just assumed.
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He do exist.
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He do be.
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That's the, yeah, do be, do be, do.
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He do be.
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Yeah, he absolutely.
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That's a Keithism.
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That'll be special.
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The devil does exist, angels do exist.
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From a scriptural standpoint, it's not an option.
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But what happened at the end of the 40 days? Jesus is in the wilderness.
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The angels ministered to him.
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It's a proof right there.
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Do we have to wonder if they exist? No, it's assumed.
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For a Christian to deny the existence of angels, he must, by necessity, deny scriptural infallibility.
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He must simply say the scripture errs.
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So as a church that affirms the infallibility and inerrancy of the Bible, we affirm the existence of angels.
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We cannot not affirm the existence of angels.
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Their existence is assumed.
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Number two, the Bible describes their creation.
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The Bible describes their creation.
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Now this I do wanna look up because this is a little more involved.
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So I'm gonna ask for some readers.
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Miss Cindy, I'm only calling on you because I know you're not afraid.
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Would you look up Psalm 148 for me? And Gary, since you're right beside her, this Gary, not that Gary.
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Colossians 1.16.
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So we have two passages we're gonna look at describing their creation.
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Psalm 148, I wanna go there so I can read along with you.
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Sister, give me just a second.
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So Psalm 148, and you can read one through five if you would.
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Okay.
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Praise the Lord.
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Praise the Lord for whose praise him on his host.
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Praise him sun and moon.
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Praise him all you shining stars.
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Praise him you highest heavens and you waters above the heavens.
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Let them praise the name of the Lord for he commanded and they were created.
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Look it right there.
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Notice what verse five says.
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God commanded and they were created.
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You go back up in the list.
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What's one of the things in the list? Angels.
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So God, in that list, you could, I mean, if we were doing an exegetical, we could pull all, we could say he created the sun, he created the moon, he created the stars, he created the heavens, but he also created the angels because that's one of the things that says he spoke and they, all the things that came before, were created.
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All right.
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Thank you, sister.
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Brother, would you read Colossians 1.16? Thank you.
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Not a direct reference to the word angel, but a direct reference to the words that are used.
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We're gonna see these later in the study.
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Words that are used to describe angels, which are principalities, powers, right? Those words.
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And he says things visible and invisible.
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What's one of the things that we know, and we haven't looked at the scripture for this, but we know by nature, angels have an invisible quality unless they want to be seen, right? That's something, and we're gonna see that more later, but that's a, when he talks about God creating all things visible and invisible, in that he is referring to the physical and the spiritual.
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The realms, the two realms of existence, right? The realm of the natural, the realm of the spiritual.
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And so God created, in this, I'm talking about Christ being the creator here, is the creator of these things.
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So we see an Old Testament passage tells us they were created.
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A New Testament passage tells us they were created.
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And you say, well, pastor, why are you making a point? Well, here's the reason.
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Angels are not eternal.
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That's the point.
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God is the only eternal being.
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If he is creator and they are creation.
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They are creation, right.
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They are not creator, they are creation, which means there was a time when they were not.
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That's the point.
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Angels are part of creation.
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Only God had no beginning.
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And this one, I wanna read to you.
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First Timothy, if you wanna write this down.
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First Timothy six, verse 16, says this.
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Well, beginning verse, the verse ahead, it says, he who is blessed and only sovereign, king of kings, Lord of lords, who alone has immortality, who dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see, to him be honor and eternal dominion, amen.
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God alone has immortality.
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And you said, oh, wait a minute, we're immortal because we're gonna live forever.
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No, no, no, this reference to immortality is both ways.
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See, we don't have immortality both ways because there was a time when we were not.
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You didn't exist before you existed.
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It sounds so redundant, but it's so true, right? You didn't pre-exist your own existence.
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There was a time when you were not.
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Do you remember it? No, because you weren't.
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I don't remember the 70s.
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I don't remember the 60s.
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Everything I know about the 60s comes from a textbook or stories.
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Because I worked.
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And then on April 2nd, 1980, I was.
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Now, I existed in the womb before that, but I didn't know anything except for the womb, right? I wasn't, and then I was.
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There was a time when angels wasn't, and then they was.
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God has always been.
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That's why God is different from everything else.
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He is the only one who never was not.
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That's a bunch of weird way to say stuff, but you understand what I'm getting at.
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So angels were created by God, and they were created holy.
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I'm gonna just very quickly, because of time, Ezekiel 28, 15, let me jump to that very quickly.
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Ezekiel 28, verse 15.
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You were blameless in your ways from the day you were created till unrighteousness was found in you.
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Now, this is actually a connection to the statement about Satan, and we'll talk about him later.
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This is a reference to a passage which many believe to be speaking about Satan, and it says he was created holy or created blameless.
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He fell.
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The point of this is when angels were created, God didn't create, okay, you're gonna be the good ones, and you're gonna be the bad ones.
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You understand that? God created angels that were holy, and some fell.
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What's the difference between that and mankind? Well, there's a little difference.
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Mankind has the ability to procreate and create, and what happens is when mankind procreates and then recreates, he's creating one after his own image.
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First Corinthians 15 tells us we bear the image of our father Adam, right? Angels do not procreate.
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Angels, Jesus said, they'll be like, when we die and we're in heaven, we'll be like the angels, neither married nor given in marriage.
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Angels don't procreate.
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So there was a finite number of angels created.
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Part of them fell, part of them did not.
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Thus, we would refer to the ones who did not as the elect angels and those who did fall as the fallen angels.
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They are not making more angels.
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Angels aren't getting together and making more angels.
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You understand? I mean, is that, you know, sensible enough, all right? All right, the third thing on your list, we said the Bible assumes their existence.
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The Bible describes their creation.
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Thirdly, the Bible is silent as to when they were created, when they were created.
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And this is what I realized when I looked at my notes, I said, this is what's gonna take our time tonight.
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And I'm already out of time.
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But I'm gonna take a little extra time because I can.
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Go ahead.
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Yeah, but I do have an elders meeting to get to, so I'm not gonna take too terribly much more time.
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The Bible is silent as to when angels were created.
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And this becomes somewhat of a theological argument between some people.
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So I wanna provide you with the options.
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And I'm going to not be dogmatic because I don't think that I have the liberty or really the knowledge to be dogmatic on this.
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I can simply say, here are the options.
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Number one, some believe the angels were created before the world, okay? That would mean the creation of the angels happened before Genesis 1.1, right? If you think of time by virtue of Genesis 1.1, what happens in Genesis 1.1? The beginning.
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In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
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The earth was formless and void.
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Darkness was over the face of the deep.
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The spirit of God was hovering over the face of waters.
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God said, let there be light.
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And there was light and it was good.
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And then he said, there was evening and there was morning, the first day.
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But it's not the first day of God's existence.
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It's the first day of the existence of his new creation, this world, right? We don't know what was finished on the first day because later it talks about putting the stars in the sky.
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Talks about putting the sun and moon in place.
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And so there's a potential that it was just this world that was started and then everything else was built around it, right? Other people believe it all started at the same time.
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And what we're seeing in Genesis 1 through 6, or day one through six, is we're seeing an expansion of, as the world begins to develop in the midst of this universe, right? So we don't know exactly how it works out.
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I am thinking of preaching through Genesis.
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I'm finishing first Corinthians.
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If you think you want me to do that, let me know.
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I'm always encouraged to, but that's a heavy duty subject.
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50 chapters of just meat on meat on meat.
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But the point is when creation happens, did the angels already exist or did they come into existence during the six day period? Well, I wanna show you one verse that seems to indicate that they existed before Genesis 1.1.
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And I'll show you, if you go with me to Job again, I'm not being dogmatic.
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I'm just showing you the evidence, right? I'll let you form your conclusion.
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Job 38.
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Begin in verse four.
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Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? So what's the subject? God is speaking to Job.
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Where were you when I created the earth? As if to say, who are you to talk back to me? This is the whole Romans nine, who are you old man to answer back to God, right? Where were you when I founded the earth or created the earth? Tell me if you have understanding who determined its measurements? Surely you know, or who stretched the line upon it? On what were its bases sunk or who laid its cornerstone when the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy? Who are the sons of God in this passage? The angels.
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They are also referred to as the morning stars.
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That's another euphemism for angels.
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And it says they did what when God created the foundation of the earth? They sang, right? Which would mean they already existed.
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If that is what the text is saying, that they were there at the foundation, then that means God created them prior to the creation of the world, prior to Genesis 1.1.
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So that's one theory.
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Others say that angels are part of this created order, therefore they are created during the six days.
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And you say, well, how would that jive with this? Well, if they're part of that first day's creation and they're automatically created to do what? To praise God for what he's doing.
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So again, this is where I'm not dogmatic.
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Here's where I do think the danger lies.
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Some people believe that angels were created in what was called the gap.
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How many of you ever heard of the gap theory? I know a few of you.
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I know you, Mike, because you've studied Genesis and you've heard of the gap theory, right? What's the gap theory? The gap theory is this, that there's a gap of unknown time between Genesis 1.1 and Genesis 1.2, that there's a gap of time, of unknown time.
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And in that time, God created another race of people.
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They didn't work out.
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And so he washed them out and started over.
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Again, you wanna talk about reading something into the text? That ain't there.
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And it does.
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But this is where some people believe demons came from and the devil.
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Because they say, well, there was a gap of time.
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There were these evil ones.
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They were led by this leader.
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He was known as Lucifer.
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There's a whole big story that goes along with this.
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So somebody just come up with that theory? Yeah, and I encourage you, look up the gap theory.
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There's several different versions of it, but essentially it says somewhere between God's first day and the end of the first day, there was another epoch of time.
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And they exalted themselves.
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Yes, we all do.
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Yeah, but definitely so.
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So you've heard of that, brother, the gap theory? That's a, it's a strange one, but again, it's an attempt to try to find an answer to a question.
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What's the question? When were the angels created? That's the question, right? We know they were, so we don't know when, and so we establish a when.
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We find a hole, right? Men are great at filling holes, and that's what we see a hole.
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Let's fill it with something.
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Because we do know this.
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We know that angels existed by the sixth day.
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How do we know that? Yeah, because it was after that.
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Well, let me back up.
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We know angels existed shortly after the sixth day, because that's when Satan tempted Eve.
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So he had to have been created and fallen by then.
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You understand? All of the things that we're gonna learn about Satan, he was created righteous, he fell, he is now the hater of God, the one who wants to sit on God's throne.
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All of those things had to happen sometime.
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Before, well, before the temptation of Eve, and we don't know how long that was.
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That's another thing.
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We don't know how long it was from the creation of Eve till the fall of Adam and Eve, but we do, I assume, and assumption is dangerous, but I do assume it's shorter time.
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I don't think there were millions of years of Adam and Eve before the fall.
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In fact, I kind of, in my mind, knowing how I am as a human man, I kind of think after God gave them the command, they were already walking toward the tree.
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I mean, it's just, it's the nature of rebellion is I can't have that.
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You mean this one right here? This one is the one I can.
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I just want to make sure, because as soon as you turn your head, you know, I got a three-year-old, I know how it works.
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But we don't know how long that time was, but we know this.
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By the time of the fall of man, there had already been a previous fall.
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By the time of the fall of man, there had been the fall of Satan and his angels.
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You know, the Bible calls them his angels.
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In fact, I just, just very quickly, just if you want to write this down, that text is Matthew 25, 41.
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Then he will say to those on his left, depart from me, you cursed into the eternal fire, prepared for the devil and his angels.
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So we know that's demons, but that's another way of saying demons.
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But that's, we know by the time of the fall of man, there had already been a fall.
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There had been a fall in the angelic realm.
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And what's the difference between the fall of man and the fall of angels, beloved? Absolutely.
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You nailed it.
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Man is offered a savior.
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The angels were never offered.
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In fact, I think that's why Satan hates us so much.
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Satan hates us because God loves us.
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We are the object of God's affection.
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Therefore, we are the object of Satan's hatred.
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Yes, he was the bright morning star, and he wasn't happy up to that.
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He wanted to be like that.
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That's right, he wanted to be God.
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And what did he tell Eve? Eat this and you can be God, you'd be like God.
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All right, that is the ultimate fall of man, the desire to be like God.
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All right, we're out of time.
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Let me just conclude this section.
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We know that angels exist because the Bible assumes there's an existence.
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We know they had a definite beginning because the only one that is eternal is God.
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We do not know when they were created, but we know by when they were created.
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They were created by the time man fell because they were instrumental in his fall.
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So that's our opening lesson.
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I hope that was helpful and it gave you a little purchase upon which we're gonna stand for the lessons in the future.
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All right, let's pray.
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Father, thank you for this time of studying.
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I pray that it's been helpful, fruitful, and encouraging.
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And Lord, may we understand that the redemption that you've given us in Christ is something that you did not even provide for the angelic realm.
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Lord, how merciful and with what great love have you loved us? God, you are amazing.
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So we thank you in Christ's name.
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Amen.