Demons, What We Believe, Part 16

Andrew Rappaport's Rapp Report

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Those angels that rebelled against God were confirmed in a permanent state of unholiness, and those that didn't rebel against God were confirmed in a permanent state of holiness.

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So once this act happened, there is no change. This is something we said before is different than human beings.

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Angels had one time to act, then it's confirmed for all of eternity. As human beings, we have our whole lifetime to act, and then once we die, it is confirmed.

01:06

Wrap Report with your host, Andrew Rapoport, where we provide biblical interpretation and application.

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This is a ministry of Striving for Eternity and the Christian Podcast Community. For more content or to request a speaker for your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.

01:22

Welcome to another edition of the Wrap Report. I'm your host, Andrew Rapoport, joined with my co -host here,

01:29

Jim Osman from Kootenai Community Church. How you doing, Jim? Very good. Good to be back on the program again. We are going to be talking today about fallen angels.

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Now, we don't often talk in those terms. Most people, when they think of angels, they think of angels and demons, but we're going to call them fallen or unholy angels because that's what they are, and most people think as if demons are something other than angels, but they are not.

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They're actually angels, and if you've been following with us in our series, we just finished talking about holy angels, those angels that were holy and would never fall, would always remain holy.

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Today, we're going to talk about those angels who rebelled against God and that they ended up falling and being in an unholy state.

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We're going to talk about that, and then next week, we'll end up focusing in on Satan himself. We want to get started with this.

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Before we do, we want to just let you know we are members of the Christian Podcast Community, a community of Christian podcasters.

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We have over 50 -some. I'll just do that. I think it's close to 55 now.

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Podcasts, all vetted. We just interviewed a gentleman that it looks like he's going to be joining, and he was surprised he had told his wife,

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Jim, that he's like, they gave me one form. That form had to get approved. Then they gave me a second form.

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Then after that was approved, they set up an interview. Went to his wife and said, these guys are really serious. I said to him, well, don't worry.

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If you get through the interview, you still have one more form to fill out before the contract. So he was like, wow, you guys really vet.

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We actually reject close to 70 % of the people who apply to the

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Christian Podcast Community. Really? Yeah. Now I feel special. You should.

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And our friendship didn't help you at all. You still had to do an interview and everything. Yeah, I did. I still had to suffer through that.

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If you go to ChristianPodcastCommunity .org, you'll find a lot of good ones. I listen to almost every one of them, some that I look forward to.

03:33

I don't know, Jim, the Truth Be Known podcast with Nathaniel and Icky, they just started a series on Calvinism and Arminianism.

03:41

I don't know if you got to hear that one. Very good. No, I have not. The intro was very good. We'll see how the rest of the series goes, but I think with them it'll go well.

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We have some for everyone. If you like listening to the Word of God, we have Scroll Chatter. That is, he reads through the

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Legacy Standard version and then gives some theological points. Each day he either does a rambling or discuss theology, different things.

04:04

We have ones just for women, ones for apologetics, theology. So we have something for everybody out there.

04:11

So I encourage you to go check that out. Yeah, Bitcoiners. Are you a Bitcoiner? You got Bitcoin in the Bible? Bitcoin in the

04:16

Bible, which, you know, it's interesting. You like mediocre preaching? There's a couple of guys on there with their sermons. Like you?

04:22

You mean? I don't think that's mediocre. Yeah, that's exactly right. I don't think you count as mediocre, but, you know, it's interesting.

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Bitcoin in the Bible, because when we first heard them, we were like, we're a Christian community.

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So we don't do shows that are just someone who is a Christian and happens to have talk about Bitcoin.

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We actually had one that was another Bitcoin show that we rejected because it was all

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Bitcoin. No Christianity. We had another show about finances. It was all about finances and no

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Christianity. Bitcoin in the Bible is literally half Bitcoin, half Bible. It's more

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Bible than it is Bitcoin, actually. Yeah. I mean, their whole second season was like all Bible, like explaining what the

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Bible says about money and how to use it and what it does. It was good because you don't get a whole lot of people who dig into looking at that in that way.

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Now, we do have another podcaster who's written, oh, like a five, seven hundred page book on what the

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Bible has to say about money. And that's Daniel Minnick of Truth Espresso podcast.

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A huge book, covered everything that the Bible has to say on it. But today what we're talking about is fallen angels.

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Now, in this series, this is part 16 in our series on what we believe.

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And what we're doing is going through the doctrinal statement at strivingforeternity .org, basically digging into what a doctrinal statement says, but then all that's behind this doctrinal statement that we have at Striving for Eternity.

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If you want to follow along, go to strivingforeternity .org. Click the About tab at the top and go to what we believe you'll be able to find it there.

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So before we get started, let me let you guys know that if you're at Striving for Eternity, which hopefully you're reading along with us in our doctrinal statement and you're already doing that, if you do decide that you want to join us on that page, go over to the store.

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We're running a special right now for the book that we have, Sharing the Good News with Mormons.

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We're going to be offering that as a discount, a 35 % discount. So if you want to get that at 35 % off, just use the coupon code

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LDS. That stands for Latter Day Saints. LDS is the coupon code to get 35 % off on Sharing the

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Good News with Mormons. Now, here's the thing with that book. Jim, in your area, there's a lot of Mormons. Some people are going, well, not so much in my area.

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This is put together by over 20 authors, and each of us had a different way of sharing the gospel.

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Not all of this is directed only at Mormons. A lot of it—I mean, my style, what

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I wrote on was open -air evangelism. That's something that anyone can do anywhere. So a lot of these have nothing to do specifically with Mormonism, though we all wrote them geared towards sharing the gospel with Mormons.

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So this is a book you'll learn a lot about Mormonism, but more specifically, you'll learn about ways to share the gospel.

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So if you want to get 35 % off, just go to our store. The book is Sharing the Good News with Mormons, and you can get 35 % off with the coupon code

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LDS. And so with that, Jim, if you wouldn't mind reading for us what we have that we're going to discuss today.

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All right, this is a section on fallen angels. Unholy angels are those angels that are confirmed in unholiness by a single act of disobedience that occurred between Genesis 1 .31

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and 3 .1. The fall of the unholy angels occurs between God's declaration that all creation was very good and the temptation of Eve by Satan.

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These angels apparently fell at the same time that Satan fell and were at that time confirmed in a condition of fallenness.

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Unholy angels abode on earth or imprisonment, but those on earth have access to heaven.

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Unholy angels will be judged by redeemed people. Hell was prepared for suffering and containment for these angels and will be cast into the lake of fire for all eternity.

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Due to the organization of angels, these angels are agents of Satan. While attempting to thwart the plan of God, they actually execute it.

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They may possess unsaved men, but not believers. The first thing that we look at when we look at this is that demons are angels.

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I said in the beginning, this is something that a lot of people get confused with because they think as if angels and demons are two separate categories of beings.

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They are not. That's why we're categorizing them as holy angels, which is what we looked at in the previous couple of weeks, and then now fallen or unholy angels.

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So right off the bat, we're trying to correct some misunderstandings that people have about demons.

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If we refer to them in this episode as demons, we're not saying that they're not angels.

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They are fallen angels, those that rebelled against God at some point, as we say here, between Genesis 1 .31

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and Genesis 3 .1. We've discussed this on previous shows, but it bears repeating because that's exactly how we remember things.

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When we look at this, we don't know the exact day, which day of creation that the angels were created.

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What we do know is that by Genesis 1 .31, God declared everything very good or good, and therefore the angels could not have fallen at that point.

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We do know by Genesis 3 .1, Satan was working on deceiving

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Eve, and so we know that somewhere between that time, they fell.

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How much time was there between the seventh day of creation and the fall of Adam and Eve?

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We have no idea. It could be days. If you'll read this and think it's the eighth day,

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I tend to think it probably wasn't. It could be days, it could be weeks, it could be months, it could even be years that you could have between the creation week and the fall of Adam and Eve.

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Adam and Eve might have obeyed the command not to eat of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil.

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However, once Satan and the angels fell, then it would be when they start,

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Satan comes to deceive Eve. That could have been years later. We really have no way of knowing that, and so we tend to think that this is something that happened within a few days.

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I tend to think, Jim, I don't know if you have an opinion on this, I tend to think it was probably longer months to years.

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Well, it was soon enough that Eve did not have time to conceive a child, because they didn't have any children before they fell. It had to have been before that.

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How long it would have taken Eve to conceive a child, that we don't know. Correct. I'm glad you brought that up, because John MacArthur, when he looks through this, mentions that one of the things that was the curse was when it speaks about childbearing, he actually believes that there was a longer period of time it would have taken to bear a child, and it was sped up.

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So it might have been where it could have been, for example, elephants that have, I think, only one cycle a year, dogs,

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I think, have two cycles a year, and that's it. It could have been that that went from once a year to monthly.

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In order to compensate for the fall. That's the argument there, that the ability to bear children probably would have been very lengthy between cycles, in the beginning, that because of the fall, that cycle was sped up to compensate for the reality of death now as a result of the fall.

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So it's the curse. The curse that would have sped up that childbearing ability. These are all things that, when we say these things, there's a lot behind this that people don't often think about.

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We want you guys, as you're listening, thinking about these things, because we want to be accurate to Scripture, and we need to know when

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Scripture says what it says, and not read into it what it doesn't say. We're not covenant theologians, after all.

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That infant baptism thing, we'll get there, sure. So it says here, unholy angels are those angels that are confirmed in unholiness by a single act.

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We talked about this when we talked about the holy angels. There was some act where those angels that rebelled against God were confirmed in a permanent state of unholiness, and those that didn't rebel against God were confirmed in a permanent state of holiness.

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So once this act happened, there is no change. This is something we said before is different than human beings.

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Angels had one time to act, then it's confirmed for all of eternity. As human beings, we have our whole lifetime to act, and then once we die, it is confirmed.

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So we could hear the gospel over and over and over again at some point, even though we've heard it a dozen times, we repent after the 12th time.

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Angels don't have that. Angels had one act of rebellion, and that was it. In the case with Adam and Eve, if that one act of rebellion, they would have been permanently in that state.

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We all, with Adam as our federal head, we'll look at this when we get into looking at man, Adam as our federal head, we'd be permanently in that state.

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This is where the beings that we know as human beings and angels have a difference here.

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Another thing we see in the next sentence is that the fall of unholy angels occurs between God's declaration that all creation was very good, as I mentioned,

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Genesis 1 .31, the temptation of Eve in Genesis 3. So this had to have occurred between there because the first sin in the world was not actually

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Adam and Eve. Most people think that. The first sin that occurred in the universe was when

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Satan fell. And what we see is that Satan's fall did not bring a curse onto humanity, it didn't bring a curse into the creation, but Romans 8 reveals that because of what

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Adam and Eve did, all of the universe is groaning. So somehow the actions of Adam and Eve, God put a curse that affects the entire universe.

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So there was a change in the way that God punished or the result, consequence from Satan's and the demons' fall versus Adam and Eve's.

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And these angels apparently fell at the same time. That is hard for us maybe to understand what was going on.

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Could it be that Satan was rebelled and got a whole bunch of other angels on his side?

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How long did that take? It doesn't seem like it was an immediate, or it wouldn't be an immediate thing unless all these other demons were thinking the same.

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They all had a rebellious heart. But we end up seeing that Eve partook of the fruit.

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The result of the curse didn't take an immediate effect. When Adam, our federal head, partook of the fruit, then all of a sudden they recognized their nakedness, they recognized their shame, then all of a sudden that's when the curse took effect.

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So there was, though it may be a short time period between Eve's partaking of the fruit and Adam's, we don't know how long it took for the angels to get this rebellion, but it seems apparently that they all fell at the same time and were confirmed in that condition of fallenness.

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So it seems that whether Satan was working on them the way he did with Eve, whatever it may be, it seems that there was a one -time act where they all fell.

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We don't have scripture that talks about this, and that makes it hard. So this is conjecture. This is something where we're looking at the scriptures and saying it seems this way.

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And that's why the doctrinal statement says the angels apparently fell at the same time.

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We don't know. Not for sure. I mean, it could have been that there was a couple days where there's rebellion going on, and they all chose sides, and then

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God just decided, okay, that's it. Now you're confirmed in that state. Let me ask you a question,

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Jim. The angels are in heaven. They're in God's throne room. There's some that start rebelling, and Satan is there.

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He's one of them. We know he's the only demon we know by name. They're rebelling against God. Did God not see this coming?

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Was he surprised? No, I would not say that God was surprised. I think he did see it coming.

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In fact, he not only saw it coming, but I would argue that he ordained that it should happen. Does that mean he made it happen?

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No, that God can ordain something. God can ordain something to happen without being the cause of it happening in the sense that he bears responsibility for it happening.

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So he can allow things to happen and still be in control. Yep, and by allowing, I would say he is ordaining that it happens and still be in control, but he is not the effective and therefore blameworthy cause of the event.

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Satan bears the responsibility for his fault, but God himself is the one who has ordained that it should happen and that it should come to pass.

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I'm just thinking of now as we're talking, but I wonder, you know, you have those that hold to Molinism, which is this idea that God looked at all the possible worlds that could have existed and chose one that was going to actually happen, which

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I do, by the way, think Molinism is really kind of funny because the whole idea of Molinism is to address this fact of how could

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God be sovereign and yet man have a free will? The whole thing is to protect man's free will.

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Yeah. And I've debated Molinists, and I ask this one question all the time. Once God chooses this universe out of all these possible universes, can we do anything other than what we freely chose to do in this universe?

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And they go, no. I said, so we really don't have free will once God chooses it. I mean, they want to avoid

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Determinism, and they actually back up into more Determinism. They say Calvinism is Determinism.

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When you say God ordained things, that's Determinism. Well, they back up into it even more because I can't do anything other than what

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I would do in this world that God chose that one. I can't do anything other than that. That's Determinism.

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Right? Yeah, and they back into it trying to avoid it. Exactly, which is kind of interesting. But I wonder, how would they deal with the angels?

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Because their argument is always on free will. And so the argument that they would have is that we make these choices, and God looks through at all the possible choices we can make, and then he chose the world that we're actually in.

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He said all the others don't give him the greatest glory, but this one does. And he's doing this all to protect our free will.

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Do angels have free will? Yeah. If the angels don't have free will, then

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God— they still have the problem that God confirmed the angels in a condition of fallenness.

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The fallen angels, then, the demons, cannot do anything except evil because they're in a confirmed state of rebellion.

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So they have no ability or will to do anything that is right. So is their will truly free if they are a confirmed and never -to -be -altered demonic or evil being?

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And the holy angels the same way. If they are unalterably holy, and when you say that they're confirmed by this single act, what you're really saying is that at some point there was a fall that happened, and that after that fall, we don't have angels continuing to fall out of grace and holiness into an ungraced or unholy state, nor do we have angels in an unholy state that are making themselves more holy and switching sides back and forth, as it were, across that divide.

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We're simply saying that the fall of the angelic realm was a one -time event. There was one act or one event that made this divide happen and that there's no crossing over that divide.

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So the holy angels have no more free will than the fallen angels in the sense that they cannot will to do what is evil.

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They are unalterably holy and will not fall again. And this is where there's a difference between humans and angels, as we keep trying to point out.

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Because when you think about these systems, you think about Molinism, where they're going to say, well, humans have a free will.

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We would say—and we're going to get to this in later episodes in this series— we would say that mankind was cursed with sin, and so therefore we're slaves to sin, as Romans says.

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We're enslaved to sin. Now, I would say Adam and Eve had a free will prior to the fall.

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Prior to the fall, they could choose. They had nothing influencing them in their choices.

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They could choose between good and evil. I think that angels started out with this same choice that Adam and Eve had.

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Difference being is once the angels chose evil, and because they were all created at once, there was no federal head, when they chose evil, that was confirmed, and they cannot switch.

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What we have with human beings is we have a federal head in Adam. In that federal head, what we end up having is with Adam, we are now, through him, taking on a sin nature, and so we don't have a free will anymore.

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We have a will. I believe that when we become Christians and we're converted to Christ and the

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Holy Spirit indwells us, now we have the Holy Spirit influencing us, as well as a sin that influences sin.

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I think now we could say we have a free will because the Holy Spirit indwelling us gives us where we could choose good, and even though we don't really choose good,

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God chooses it through us. It's the doctrine of superintending. But what we end up seeing is we would say we don't have a free will, we have a cursed will until we're saved.

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I would use the term bondage. You're in bondage to your sin, to darkness, to Satan, to your own nature, to your own lusts.

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Those things enslave us. And this makes the difference, though. When we look at the angels, this is something to help us to think through.

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When you look at some of these theological systems like Molinism and they say these things, well, do the angels have a free will?

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Well, once they made this decision, they don't have a free will anymore. They're confirmed in it.

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We still have a will. We can still choose. But can we choose to do good apart from God?

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Scripture would say no. We need the Holy Spirit indwelling us for that. So let's look at more of this.

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It says, unholy angels abode on earth or imprisonment, but those that have access on earth have access to heaven.

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And we have a couple of verses that we could look to for this. Clearly, Job, if we think of Job, Satan was able to have access to both earth and to heaven.

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We can see Isaiah 14, verse 12 says, how you have fallen from heaven,

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O star of the morning, son of the dawn, you have been cut down to the earth.

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And this is a reference to Satan being that star of the morning. So he has fallen from heaven and was thrown to the earth.

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Now, when we say this, we're being really clear to say that angels, both holy and unholy, can go back and forth between earth and heaven.

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Unholy angels seem to be kicked out of heaven in a sense where earth is their home, that's their natural place to be, where holy angels, their natural place would be in heaven, but they can move back and forth.

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Now, before we get to the imprisonment in Jude 6, let's first look at this because there is one thing that a lot of people have confusion with.

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And that is that people think that somehow Satan is the god of the earth.

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Satan is the ruler in this realm and all the demons are here and all the people are under Satan's rule.

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Now, lest you think, Andrew, you're kidding. There can't possibly be people that would believe such things.

24:59

Well, I hate to disappoint you. Maybe it's good that you don't know that people believe that, but if you don't know that, it's good because you don't follow a lot of word of faith preachers.

25:12

Yeah. Because that is a big thing within word of faith. This is a big teaching they have.

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They even believe that when Jesus came to earth, he came to earth and had to be ransomed to Satan.

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He had to pay a debt to Satan as the king to be able to bring us to heaven.

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You do a lot of study in this. How common is this within word of faith? This is the warp and woof of word of faith theology.

25:39

That is their doctrine. They believe that God has been kicked out of this earthly realm and he has no access to it unless we grant him access to this earthly realm by either speaking words of faith or through prayer or through declarations or through creating our own reality.

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We give God needs permission from us to have access into this world because he has legally been kicked out of this creation by the rebellion of Adam.

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In the word of faith theology, there is this standard of law, this legal structure that supersedes

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God. It's higher than God, and he has no legal access to this earthly realm. That is word of faith theology.

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This is prevalent throughout word of faith. This is a core doctrine.

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All of them believe it. That influences their doctrine of prayer, their doctrine of confession, their doctrine of reality, their doctrine of salvation, their doctrine of us being little gods in this earthly realm, their doctrine of atonement.

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All of it. What Jesus came to do, he came to give God access to this again. He came to empower us to give

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God access to this world. Their angelology, their ecclesiology, their soteriology, all of it rests upon those doctrines.

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We'll dig into this more so when we look at Satan, but one of the issues I have with the charismatic movement, word of faith movement,

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New Apostolic Reformation movement, one of the issues I have with all of those movements is they give to Satan exactly what

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Satan always wanted. They make Satan God. As if Satan is everywhere, he knows all of our thoughts, he's all powerful, he's affecting everything.

27:21

We need Satan's permission to do things that Satan's in control. They actually give to Satan everything

27:29

Satan always wanted. At least in this little realm of thinking. So we have to take a step back and say, wait a minute.

27:37

If we have a belief system that gives Satan everything he wants and lowers

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God to a lower standard, well then, can we really say this is of God?

27:50

Yeah, it's a satanic religion. Basically, yes. Yeah. I know some of our listeners are probably freaking out that we just said that.

27:58

What else do you call a religious system? A worldview, a doctrine that exalts Satan like that and makes

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God out to be subservient to his power other than a Satan -exalting, Satan -magnifying religious system?

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That's all it is. We're not saying they worship Satan. We're saying that their worldview makes Satan greater than God, or at least on par with God.

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At the very least, he's on par with God. And if you're still upset, if you're still listening after hearing that and you're disagreeing...

28:25

You can email Andrew. Well, I had something better I was going to suggest. You can. You can email info at strivingforeturning .org

28:32

and ask for the DVD series Clouds Without Waters, or you can just go to justinpeters .org

28:39

and order it there. Get that. Watch that. And then you'll see that this is not— we are not saying something just off the cuff here, but what

28:49

Justin ends up doing is going through all of these different guides and exposing this, because what they actually will argue is that God came to earth as a man— well,

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I should correct that because not all of them believe he— they think he gave up the deity— but that Jesus became

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God so that we could become God. Now, where do we hear that in Scripture?

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Sounds very familiar to a passage we've been referencing today. Oh, Genesis chapter 3!

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That's exactly what Satan said! That we could be like God.

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This is what Mormonism teaches. This is what Word of Faith teaches. Benny Hinn, Creflo Dollar, Kenneth Copeland, all these guys.

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They're going to say that you can become a little God. Not the big God, but a little

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God. Where Mormonism will say you can become just as God is, just of your own planet, sometime later.

29:49

I guess the one problem I have with that is, there's a lot of people in the Mormon Church, if they're all getting their own planets in their own solar system—

29:57

A lot of universes. Yeah, there's a lot of universes. Why haven't we seen any of the other populations over time?

30:04

They should be all, because it didn't just start with earth. It's been going on for a while. The universe is really a big neighborhood.

30:11

I mean, there's a lot of space between populations. Yeah, yeah. But I think numerically, at some point, there's got to be— it's got to work out somewhere.

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Got to fill it up. Go watch the DVD series Privileged Planet and realize how slight the probability is of having everything we need to sustain human life, and then think that they're claiming that it happens all over the place.

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What we end up seeing with this is, this isn't a little thing when we say that the unholy angels, their boat is on earth, and they have access to heaven, but they are not the rulers of this world in the sense that they're the authorities.

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It's that they've been thrown down from heaven. And Satan does have rule as the angel that he is above being the leader there.

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The thing there that you end up seeing is, yeah, he has maybe the leadership as the hierarchy of angels go on earth of all the demons.

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But that is not to say that they have control over the earth and God doesn't.

31:15

That God has to submit to them. That's not true. Now, I mentioned another thing in this, that they're either on earth or imprisoned.

31:26

That's another aspect that we end up seeing in Jude 6. Now, folks, if you're asking what chapter of Jude that is, just stop.

31:37

There's only one chapter in Jude. So, what we end up seeing is, Jude 6 says,

31:56

So what we end up seeing is, Jude references the fact that there are some angels that fell, and furthermore, they ended up, whatever the abode is that they were supposed to have, they gave that up.

32:09

And because of that, God has punished them to be in eternal bonds now. Now, we know that other angels, we'll look at Revelation, other angels will be subject to the eternal lake of fire, but they have a freedom right now.

32:23

But there are some angels that don't have the freedom. There are some angels that are, right now, imprisoned in eternal bonds.

32:31

When did that happen? Well, I'm going to argue that happened in Genesis 6.

32:38

Okay, so I think that you have a case where angels were, in some way, doing something that was not proper.

32:45

They were on earth, and what we end up seeing there is it talks about sons of God having children with daughters of women.

32:53

And sons of God is a reference to angels. I think that somehow angels were able to have or procreate with women.

33:03

People go, well, how can that be possible? That sounds like Roman mythology or Greek mythology.

33:10

Well, it is true that it sounds like that, but the question is which one came first. Genesis 6 actually occurred first, so maybe it's

33:18

Greek mythology got it from what actually happened. But the reality is we don't know enough about angels to know that that's not possible.

33:29

We end up seeing in Revelation 20, there are chains that can hold angels, and therefore they can be restrained somehow.

33:38

We do know that angels can be restrained by their angels. So even though they don't have a physical body, and we've discussed this in past episodes, even though they're invisible to us and don't have a physical body, we also have seen in the previous episodes that angels can be visible and can take on a physical form.

33:57

We don't understand that. So can they procreate? Somehow, I think that they did, and therefore those angels that did that were imprisoned, because if you look in the context of Jude, you also look at 1

34:11

Peter, where it mentions, well, it refers back to what happened in the time of the Flood. And whatever happened there is the cause of the

34:19

Flood. It was so wicked that it caused the Flood. So that's a position that many people have some differing positions.

34:26

I do, if you go through my series that I taught at Grace & Truth Bible Church that's available at Striving Fraternity's YouTube channel, you'll see me go through that passage and discuss this in detail, why

34:39

I hold to that position and how that works out. So if you disagree with me,

34:44

I'd encourage you to go check that out and then contact me, and I'll send you to Jim.

34:51

Since Jim sent all the Word of Faith folks to me. Yeah. There are some that are imprisoned as well.

34:58

The next thing we have here is that unholy angels will be judged by redeemed people.

35:06

Do you realize that? As a Christian, you will be judging angels. We see this in 1

35:13

Corinthians 6, verse 3. Do you not know that we will judge angels?

35:19

How much more matters of this life? So in the final judgment, we're going to be in a position of, as redeemed people, acting as the jury, shall we say, of God's judgment on angels.

35:31

Would you say, Andrew, that it's possible that that is a reference to both good angelic beings as well as holy angelic beings?

35:37

I mean, there are evil angelic beings that were, or I should say holy and unholy. There are evil angelic beings who obviously will be judged for their sin, their rebellion, their fall.

35:47

But is it possible that judging angels will also refer to us judging good angels and maybe giving out rewards?

35:55

In the context, and this just popped into my head right now, in the context of 1 Corinthians 6, it's talking about Christians judging between other believers.

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Believers within the household of God and us judging the works, the actions of other believers.

36:12

If we are to judge angels, it almost suggests to me, and this is just popping into my head, that we might even be judging the good angels and be giving rewards in the same way that we stand before and are judged, not for our sin, but for our works, our deeds.

36:26

So maybe the good angels are brought before us and we get to see what they have done in their faithfulness and their service to the

36:33

Lord and their service to the people of God, which we talked about last time, and we are in charge of giving out rewards on God's behalf.

36:39

Is that possible? You know, I never really thought about that, but you are right. It is fitting with the context.

36:45

The whole context there is basically saying, hey, if you have a legal case against your brother, bring it to the

36:51

Church. We should be judging one another, not the world judging us. We shouldn't bring a court case before the world, because we as saints, we judge angels.

37:03

If we judge angels, how much more the matters of this life. And so when I look at that, it sure looks like you might have a point there, because this is in the context of us acting as judges over one another's affairs.

37:15

Yeah. It just occurred to me as you were describing that, that never even popped into my head before. And it never popped in mine until you mentioned it.

37:22

So it's a very interesting thing. I have to think about that more, but it's possible.

37:28

By the time that that happens in the eschaton, you and I would say that's going to happen after the Millennial Kingdom, when we know that heaven comes to this earth.

37:37

And if angels are here and they're visible in this world with glorified saints, and they are working and serving in the

37:43

King and in the Kingdom, then at the end of that, or maybe in conjunction with that, then we have some function of judging the work of angels here in the

37:53

Millennium and rewarding them for their work in service to the King when Christ is ruling.

37:59

That's all stuff I'd have to work through in my head a little bit more. Me too. And folks, if you're getting it, this is what happens when you start discussing theology.

38:07

Especially when you discuss it with other folks, you start thinking these ideas and bouncing these ideas off one another and saying, wait, how does that affect this?

38:14

And you start having a thought. Now, we don't want to have where no one's ever discussed something before, but...

38:20

Yeah, that's dangerous. That's dangerous. But there's so much that has been discussed. It's just things, especially with angels, as we said, it's not a topic that gets a lot of focus, and therefore there's not a lot of written on it, there's not a lot discussed on it, and so there may be things where there's just not a lot out there, but it doesn't mean it hasn't been thought about and we haven't read it.

38:40

It is an interesting thing, but—and so notice, though, folks, how both Jim and I approached it by looking at the direct context of the passage, not trying to fit something in and saying, well, maybe this is—let me find a verse that supports that.

38:55

It comes out of the context, not something we put into the context. That's a very important thing.

39:00

And even as we just have this quick discussion, which some we haven't thought about, where did it come from?

39:06

From looking at the context and bringing that out and saying, okay, is this another implication of that context?

39:12

How does that apply? Something else just occurred to me, too. I've never articulated this before, but I'm going to give it a shot here for the very first time in front of everybody.

39:21

Angels are ministers of God to serve us, and so it would seem appropriate that we would then judge them for their service to us, whereas serving or us judging angels in a condemnation sense, in terms of sending them to hell and pronouncing judgment upon them, seems like explicitly and exclusively the realm of what

39:44

God would do under His purview, His domain. He would be the one to pronounce judgment upon fallen angels, whereas since holy angels serve us, we would be in a position where we could then judge them for their service.

39:56

And again, we're not talking about condemning them or even announcing their eternal destiny, but simply a judgment of their works in terms of reward for their service to us.

40:07

And it might be a way in which we, as glorified beings, show our appreciation to the angels for their service to us.

40:14

So what that brings up in my thinking now is all the things we've discussed in previous episodes where angels are serving us and we can't even see them, will it be something where God reveals all that the angels were doing behind the scenes that we didn't see, and then that's what we would be judging?

40:31

That's an interesting idea. And if even the lowest saint in the kingdom is ruling over something and someone has dominion given to them, what would that dominion be over if they don't have dominion over other saints because of a lack of faithfulness or whatever in this life?

40:48

I would argue that they would be given dominion even over the angelic realm, in which case they are in then a position to judge angels in that sense.

40:56

Yeah. Interesting thought. Folks, I hope this encourages you that the love you should have for studying theology is it never ends.

41:05

Yeah. No, I'm starting a new denomination with this, Andrew. This is good stuff. Osmanism.

41:13

One more sentence in this paragraph before we get to the next one, and it is that hell was prepared for suffering and containment for the angels and will be cast into the lake of fire for all eternity.

41:26

Now, what we're saying here is when we see, and this is, if you take a look at in the book of Revelation and chapter 20, you end up seeing something that it says, and it says this.

41:39

This is Revelation 20, verse 13. And the sea gave up the dead which were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead which were in them, and they were judged, every one of them according to their deeds.

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And death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire, which is the second death.

42:00

And if anyone's name was not found in the book of life, they were thrown into the lake of fire. I make a distinction between hell and the lake of fire.

42:10

Now, hell is a generic term that could be used to refer to the temporal place or the eternal place.

42:16

I'm saying temporal in the sense that you have this place that's death and Hades, and Hades is just a general term that just means it's death, it's after that separation from spirit and body.

42:30

It seems that that's a temporary place and eventually will be thrown into the eternal place, which is the lake of fire.

42:35

That's the eternal resting place, is the lake of fire. And so what it seems that we have is we have a case where this

42:46

Hades, or what I'm saying, hell, will be thrown into the lake of fire.

42:52

So there's a place of hell right now where there is suffering, there is a containment, some of the angels are there currently, and they will all be thrown up into the lake of fire.

43:06

And so the lake of fire is that final judgment place that we're going to see that is the final resting place for both men and of angels.

43:21

It says this in Matthew 25 verse 41. Then he will also say to those on his left, depart from me, accursed ones, into the eternal fire, which has been prepared for the devil and his angels.

43:40

So we end up seeing that hell was prepared, the lake of fire was prepared for the angels, those angels that first rebelled against God.

43:51

Now, here's the difference. They don't go in immediately, but they know where they're going. It's been 6 ,000 years for some of them that they're not in the lake of fire, that they haven't been contained, but it was designed for them.

44:04

And then because of what Satan did with Adam and Eve, it is also designed for human beings.

44:10

I know a lot of people, when they want to share the gospel, want to avoid discussing hell,

44:17

God's wrath, and things like that, because it just isn't nice. But scripture says that God prepared this for the punishment of those who rebel against him.

44:26

Jim, before we get to the next paragraph, which is a shorter paragraph, let's get a quick word from our sponsor, MyPillow.

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So go to MyPillow .com, use promo code SFE. All right, let's get to this last paragraph,

45:34

Jim. We'll wrap up with the fallen angels. It says, due to the organization of angels, these angels are agents of Satan.

45:44

I just read that, that these are the devil's angels. And so what we end up seeing there and what we're trying to say here is that there is some organization.

45:54

We said this before with the holy angels. There is some hierarchy, hierarchical structure within the kinds of angels that God has created.

46:04

We know them as a being, one being of angels, but there seems to be different kinds. There's seraphim, there's cherubim.

46:11

So there's different ones that seem to serve differently. And there seems to be some sort of hierarchy.

46:17

Those demons that rebelled all seem to report to Satan. So he's the chief demon, shall we say.

46:24

And so often what people do with that is they will refer to Satan when they mean demons.

46:32

He is kind of the, in a sense, kind of the federal head in that sense for all the demons, in the sense that we refer to Satan as if he is representative of all the demons.

46:45

But we have to, when we do that, be very careful to recognize Satan is one being in one place at one time.

46:52

And he is limited in his power. And so when people act as if Satan is everywhere, often what they mean is that it's representative of the other fallen angels, not that it's literally

47:05

Satan himself. So just be mindful of, in the way we speak, we should be careful to refer to the difference if we're referring specifically to Satan or referring to the other demons, because we do not want, as we said earlier, we do not want to give

47:21

Satan more authority than he actually has. And the only authority we know he has is that which is revealed in Scripture.

47:29

And so while attempting to thwart the plan of God, they actually execute it.

47:35

That's the amazing thing about these demons. Now, if you're a regular listener to The Wrap Report, go back a few episodes.

47:45

About a month ago, I provided a sermon that I preached at my church,

47:51

Grace and Truth Bible Church of Bucks County, Pennsylvania. I preached through Mark 15 and the first 15 verses.

47:59

And one of the things I pointed out is everything in there, everything. I mean, you have everybody trying their own way of dealing with things.

48:09

You have the Pharisees that want to have Jesus killed or out of the way, but they don't want to be the one to do it, and they end up, because they bring him to the

48:17

Romans, they end up fulfilling exactly what Jesus said, how he would die on a tree, which was fulfilled in prophecy of Scripture from 750 years before.

48:28

You have the fact that they're doing what they think is expedient for them, and they're actually fulfilling

48:34

Scripture and doing exactly what Jesus wanted done. You have Pilate, who—Pilate is doing everything he can to get out of crucifying

48:43

Jesus. He's saying, but he's innocent. He's trying to reason with people. He's trying to put up a just notorious criminal so that the people would ask for Jesus, the

48:53

King of the Jews, to be revealed. And yet, God brings a distraction to him so that while he's distracted, the chief priests can get everyone to say to crucify

49:02

Jesus. Everything that was going on was going on because it was what God wanted to happen.

49:09

It's the beauty of it is that you're sitting there and looking at this, and as humans are trying—Pilate is trying desperately not to condemn

49:17

Jesus, but Jesus is the one in charge. Jesus is the one in control.

49:22

And Jesus is the one that actually wants to go to the cross, because he knows that's what he came for.

49:28

And the same thing is the case with these demons. Though they want to try to thwart

49:35

God's plan, they actually bring it about. We have Judas, where Satan actually indwells or possesses

49:42

Judas, and what happens? He actually brings about to the

49:48

Jewish leaders there, that didn't want to have Jesus crucified during the

49:53

Passover, to give an opportunity. Here, Satan is thinking he is going to thwart

49:58

Jesus and prevent him from the plan, and he actually brings it to fruition.

50:07

This is a doctrine known as the doctrine of concurrence. You see it clearest in Genesis chapter 50 with Joseph, where his brothers come to him and say, oh, forgive us for what we've done, and he says, what, am

50:18

I God? You meant it for evil, God meant it for good to save these many people. Even when we sin,

50:25

God can use that for his glory. Even when these demons who do nothing but sin,

50:31

God can use that for his glory. That's how great God is. So we definitely shouldn't be lifting up demons and Satan as if they should be lifted up and we lower

50:41

God. God is the one that ultimately should be praised, because God takes their efforts to thwart his plans, and that's the very thing he uses.

50:52

And you know what the thing that amazes me with this, Jim? God even writes it down hundreds and thousands of years before it happens, and they still do it.

51:03

I mean, all these prophecies of Christ, and Satan knows scripture, he knows it well, and yet, what ends up happening?

51:11

He brings about the very things that God had predicted would happen.

51:18

Just an amazing thought. That principle goes back all the way even to before time began, when

51:25

God ordained the fall of Satan. Him ordaining that, Satan's rebellion accomplishes his plan,

51:31

Satan's activities end up accomplishing his plan. You might say, well, then God ultimately is the one who is responsible for Satan's fall, and he caused this to happen, so he bears responsibility.

51:42

No, he doesn't bear responsibility. He has ordained all things that come to pass without being. So while he is the cause in the secondary sense that he has ordained that this should happen, he is not the one who bears responsibility for it.

51:54

And what ends up being accomplished is actually his good, holy, and perfect will, the good of those who are his, the good of those who belong to him, and the glory of his own name.

52:05

So everything that happens and comes to pass ends up accomplishing exactly what God ordains and has ordained from eternity past.

52:13

The thing that is so beautiful about this is, like, you see what we started with earlier in this episode, right?

52:19

Satan is responsible for his rebellion, but that brought about the very things that God wanted brought about.

52:25

Yep. He's in control. So one last thing that we'll end with is this. It says, they may possess unsaved men, but not believers.

52:35

Now, we see demon possession throughout the life of Christ. We end up seeing that demons can possess men, they can overtake them, even more than one demon within a person.

52:45

And this is going to sway different. If you've been influenced by word of faith, charismatic circles, this may sway.

52:53

Demons cannot possess a believer. Why would we say that?

52:59

Because scripture says, greater is he that is in you, referring to the Holy Spirit, than he who is in the world, referring to Satan.

53:08

If you're indwelt by the Holy Spirit and he is greater, you may not be greater than the angel, than the demons, but the

53:17

Holy Spirit is. Greater is he that is in you than he who is in the world. If the

53:23

Holy Spirit indwells you, then the demons cannot overpower the Holy Spirit to indwell you.

53:29

That would be the argument we'd have for that. And therefore, people who are believers are not doing things because Satan is making them do it, or some demon is making them do it.

53:40

This is very often taught within charismatic circles. And we have to look at what place angels have.

53:49

In this case, the fallen angels. And recognize that demons do not have the ability to do what they could do to an unsaved man with a saved man.

54:00

They have a place. Now, they're given some freedom in this sense, where they're able to do this with the unsaved, because the unsaved do not have the

54:10

Holy Spirit. But those of us who have the Holy Spirit, we cannot be possessed by demons.

54:18

In the next episode, what we'll look at, we're going to look at Satan specifically, because a lot of it gets discussed with him.

54:24

We're going to look at that specifically. Jim, any closing comments you have? No, I think that's a good wrap -up of the demonic realm.

54:39

Well, before we claim that this is a wrap, I do have an announcement to make.

54:45

Just in—when I say just in, it's just in at the time of this recording, which is several weeks after it actually happened, when you hear it.

54:55

But while we're recording, we have some good news here, Jim. We have to change the name of a previous speaker at Striving for Eternity.

55:04

Oh, really? Pastor Frank Mullis is no longer Pastor Frank Mullis. Well, he's still

55:10

Pastor Frank Mullis. But he is now, officially— Hold on, let me guess, let me guess.

55:16

Did he change his gender? Is he now Francine Mullis? You do remember he's got, like, a third -degree black belt in jiu -jitsu and karate.

55:25

You really want to be saying that. Hopefully our paths will never cross. He is now

55:30

Dr. Frank Mullis. He is officially—while we were recording, he was finishing up his argumentation.

55:37

He is now Dr. Frank Mullis, so congratulations to Frank. We're very glad to hear that.

55:43

We've been praying for him as he's just been inundated with the studies for that.

55:49

Now I hope our paths do cross, because I got this thing going on my shoulder. I'd like him to take a look at it. That's a different—he's a paper doctor, not—

55:55

Oh, paper doctor, okay. Glendon Thomas, who's president of Toronto Baptist Seminary, I remember when

56:01

I was standing at his house, his wife told me that his daughter cut her finger, and she knew that dad was working on his doctorate.

56:07

So she walks up to dad and says, can you fix my finger? And the mother goes, daddy's not that kind of doctor.

56:15

He's a paper doctor. He pushes papers. Hopefully he didn't get his doctorate from, like, the

56:21

Indiana Supernatural School of Ministry and Evangelism or something like that, right? No, his doctorate is in counseling.

56:28

Oh, okay. So we want to congratulate Frank Mullis on that. And with that, that's a wrap.

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