Apologetics Session 31 - Demonology

Regarding our talk today about demonology, agentology, I got some feedback from it, and a couple said, you threw so much information on us, and it was very, very deep.

And the whole idea of these presentations that we're doing here is not to make it a college course, not to make it something that's so deep.

The information is there, that we can do that, and Matt's been very good about setting up something that people can go ahead and download and grab the information and put that there.

So I trimmed this down, I didn't go as in -depth as it is, although there's a part of it that I wanna have a lively discussion about what is going on there as we go through it.

But I will have some scholarship papers regarding this that's gonna be uploaded to the site so people can read, when they're on their own time, they can read and get more in -depth with it.

So with that being said, demonology, we talked about angelology last week, we talked about various different aspects, some of the debate issues that's going on with it too, and have an understanding of what it means in terms of God's creation.

One of the big things that we need to understand that God's creation isn't just human beings, it's this other side, this supernatural side that's there, it's at war, and we feel that every single day in our lives.

And it's something that we don't really talk about much, but it should be part of how we look at the world and how we create a worldview, knowing that God is sovereign and that he knows what is gonna happen, and knowing through scripture, and especially in Revelations, what the end result's gonna be.

So when you see things out there and it seems to bother you and upset you, know that this is a real big war that's been happening for a while now.

We have glimpses of it in our scripture, in the Old Testament, about what had happened, and it kind of translates to what happens in the

New Testament there. So demonology denotes the study of demons and evil spirits.

The doctrine of evil spirits is a catalog of enemies. And this is a nice line from, it is well with your soul, though Satan should puff it, though trials should come, let this blessed assurance control that Christ had regarded my helpless estate and has shed his own blood for my soul.

It is well with your soul, it is well, and it is well with my soul. You should have sung it.

Yeah. Yeah. And you know, and it's a wonderful way to capture our salvation and what it is.

Going through this exercise and really doing some deep research, it's hard for us to fathom or appreciate how blessed we are that we have a

God and this salvation and grace that's been bestowed on us because of this. Those who do not have that, it's gonna be an awful time for them.

And it's, and we need to be vigilant in terms of what we do with ourselves in terms of communicating what

God's truth is because people are really, especially now, are really searching for God's truth.

So what are demons? They're called the fallen ones, part of the unseen worlds.

Forces can be tested by the physical senses, the sword, and scholars call it the unseen realm is infinitely more important than the realm of material invisible.

The reason why the scholarship and the scholars look at this as more important is it is before mankind or human beings came in the earth.

The angels actually saw human beings being created. And there's a lot of debate there is like, was there jealousy, what was this?

All of a sudden, God created human beings in his image and gives attributes that are attributed solely to God and angels do not have all those attributes.

So there's a lot that's involved in what spiritual warfare is about and we'll get into that more.

Our need for salvation comes from the fall perpetuated by Satan and his minions for sin and we'll talk about this in a little bit.

So what are demons? It's virtually all religions and cultures, various forms have an idea of what evil spirits are, what demons are.

They operate, all of them operate under the control and as there's a hierarchy with angels, there is also a hierarchy with demonic forces with the head being

Satan, Lucifer, who turned into Satan. And part of their jobs, depending on where they're at, is to control individual countries, leaders, leadership, events, people, incidents, and their goal is to deliver chaos, confusion, deception, pain, death, and overall anything they hate

God and his image, which is us. So they hate us, they hate

God, their whole role is to drive us away. There's also another role that they wanna do, they wanna proverbially kick the can down the road.

They want to make sure that as many people do not believe in Jesus Christ, they do not want them to believe and the more people that do not believe, the more they feel that they can go ahead and continue being who they are until they're thrown into, after the wine is thrown in the judgment.

So there's a lot of controversies about this. Two main worldviews, though, is that no demons exist, man is the only evil, and that's something that when you talk to somebody, no, no, it doesn't happen, and that's part of the deception that is there, and the other view is demons do exist.

So those who believe demons exist, it's different views, they feel that us as human beings are powerless to it, some live in perpetual fear of demons, they perseverate, which is something that Drew had brought up, it's like we always gotta be careful of not giving too much attention to this area because that's not the main thrust of what it is with our salvation, and he's absolutely right.

But some people go in there and they get so involved in this, and a lot of it is propagated by New Age and the occult, so that demons and angels and all that.

Those in Christ believe that we have the power of Christ, and we can defeat the schemes of demons through the

Holy Spirit. And some believe that there is only a small group of believers that can intercede in demon activity, and that alludes to deliverance ministry, a lot of debate about deliverance ministry.

We can talk about that later, and I can give you my opinion on that. The origins of demons came from Lucifer's fall, he was one of God's greatest creations.

And at the beginning of this whole presentation, the main theme that was translating across all this was the battle for believing loyalty.

So in God's creation, it's really a finite thing that happens there, either you're believing

God and loyal to him, or you're not, and if you're not, then there's this dark side that develops there.

So it happens with this supernatural realm, it also happens with us as human beings.

And Ezekiel 28, 11 through 18 really shows about this battle that happens there.

They become evil, corrupt, violent, demanding worship, that was Lucifer, and then we'll talk about the five

I am's from that, and becomes God's adversary to persuade other angels to become a demonic force.

Now a takeaway with this is that God has, since he's created everything, and this may be something hard for people to understand,

God has allowed this to happen, has given permission to it. And that's hard for people to understand, but we have a great

God, and he can close it down at any moment. So he's allowing this to all take place.

And Satan becomes the supreme spirit of evil. So he was the angel of light, the greatest enemy, the adversary.

In Job 1, 6, this gives an example of this, it says, now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the

Lord, and Satan also came among them. The Lord said to Satan, from where have you come?

And Satan answered the Lord and said, from going to and fro on the earth, and from walking up and down on it.

So some of the attributes of Satan and the demonic forces is that they're constantly roaming the earth.

They don't have the ability to be omniscient in that respect, or omnipresent, I should say, but they're constantly roaming the earth.

In Zechariah 3, 1 through 3, it says, then they showed me Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of the

Lord, and Satan standing at his right hand to curse him. And the Lord said to Satan, the

Lord rebuke you, oh Satan, and the Lord has chosen Jerusalem, rebuke you. Is not this a brand plucked from the fire?

So there is an understanding in the realm of this division that is there, that there's a light side, there's a dark side, there's angels that listen to everything that God says, and then there's demonic forces on the other side.

Satan, the word Satan occurs about 37 times in the New Testament. These references use a definitive article to indicate a personal devil.

His minions are assigned to us as angels are assigned to us.

So if you can imagine, they're constantly in battle over us and what is happening there.

And influence our, a lot of decision making, and the Holy Spirit is also in the mix there to make sure that no matter what is happening, we're trying to listen to God's voice in that.

And so Jesus warns us about the existence of Satan, and the enemy who sowed them is devil, the harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are angels.

So it gives a description of the war. In Luke 10, 18 and 19, he said to them,

I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. Behold, I have given you authority to tread on serpents and scorpions and over all the power of the enemy and nothing shall hurt you.

And that's our assurance there of our salvation. And then

John is really direct. You are the father of the devil. Your will is to do your father's desire.

He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him when he lies.

He speaks out of his own character for he is a liar and the father of lies, and Jesus said that.

However, he was part of the original creation. And was Satan perfect? No. Does Satan have free choice?

Yes, just like us. So he had, so if you can imagine the being, this light that was there chose to move away from God.

And so in God's creation, he does give a level of free will to go do what they want to do.

And that is part of his image. So in Ezekiel 28, 12, son of man, raise your lamentations over the king of Tyre and say to him, thus says the

Lord God, you were a signet of perfection, full of wisdom, perfect in beauty.

And then Isaiah 14, 12 says, how you are fallen from heaven, O day star, son of the dawn, how you are cut down to the ground, you who have laid the nations low.

So you have this beautiful, wonderful creation but the side of the devil against the

Godhead. So he was beautiful. And we know little about Satan's original sins, but Christ gives us some insight in John 8, 44 as being the father of lies.

So he knows that the deceitfulness of Satan was already become apparent when he was in the presence of the

Lord. And with our God, who cannot stand sin, it would make sense that he would automatically cast him away.

Wasn't his original sin pride? Yes. His original sin. So that answers that question. That is his original sin.

Satan's lie, the five I wills, and this is something that everybody should really read and study.

Satan's lie was that he could be like God and his pride, Jim, his pride was the thing that was driving that in this verse.

It says, you said in my heart, I will ascend to heaven above the stars of God. I will set my throne on high.

I will sit on the mount of the assembly in the far reaches of the north. I will ascend above the heights of the clouds.

I will make myself like the most high. And that really explains where Lucifer fell.

The five I wills is something that he wanted to be like God. So he led a rebellion of about a third of the angels to come there and become demons.

And mainly because they couldn't no longer live in heaven. And so he was cast out from doing all that.

Does that all make sense to everybody so far? So he's called the God of this world, the prince of power of the air, the prince of this world, the adversary, the accuser.

And his powers, when God expelled out Satan, he did not lose his supernatural abilities.

He blinds the eyes of the ungodly. In the case of God of this world, has blinded the minds of the unbelievers to keeping them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.

And this is also referenced in Romans chapter one, two. Talks about after a while, they cannot even see anything else that is godly.

He bends the truth with self -deception. He is powerful, but not omnipotent. He is intelligent, but not omniscient.

He cannot read minds. He cannot oppress those in Christ. He cannot possess those in Christ.

And then first John captures this. Little children, you are from God, and have overcome them, for he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.

And so his influence is not omnipresent either. So with that being said though, there is trials that we are gonna be going through as a believer, and part of it is based on our poor decision -making that can happen.

Part of it is forces that we have no control that's gonna happen. And there's a balancing act with all that, an understanding of how we fit into this mix.

Throughout all of it though, the Holy Spirit is consistent in giving us insight to how to go ahead and navigate through that, through prayer, and it's something that we should be more mindful of when we go through trials.

It shouldn't be a surprise that it's gonna happen. So Satan's position, present and future, his position has great power over the world, over fallen angels.

He possesses a great kingdom. Christ refers to Satan as having his own kingdom, which is here.

And then Satan casts out Satan, and he is divided against himself. How then will his kingdom stand?

And this is Jesus rebuking the Pharisees there when they tried to accuse him of being the

Elzebab. And so Jesus Christ pushed it back. Don't you know that this is his kingdom?

There. He is the perpetrator of great wickedness. Then Satan answered the Lord and said,

I have come from going to and fro on the earth and from walking up and down, as I had mentioned earlier.

So they're constantly moving. He is the accuser, and he's always gonna be the accuser, and he tries to take advantage of the fact of the fall, which we'll talk about, about human beings having the same attributes as God.

So he's always deceiving, always lying, having his minions constantly pushing us to believe that we can be a

God. But at the end of Revelations 12, 10, we heard a loud voice from heaven saying, now the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our

God and the authority of his Christ have come, for the accuser of our brothers have been thrown down, who accuses them day and night before our

God. So we know what the end's gonna be. We know the end results. And so does he.

He's a tempter of all of Satan's character traits. This one, the tempter, describes him as a primary occupation.

He and his minions continually tempt men to follow his evil ways to the point where they're blind.

Everything Satan does, such as mocking everything that is holy and just, ridiculing spiritual

Christians day and night, has God's permission, his existence behind it.

So having God's permission means there's a restraint, but not that much of a restraint to allow this short period of time of Satan overtaking the world.

So in 1 Corinthians 10, 13, it says, no temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man.

God is faithful and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability. But with temptation, he would also provide a way to escape that you may be able to endure it.

So there's, every day there's gonna be a battle. And the

Holy Spirit knows that. And he will always feed you something to say, this is not gonna be right, and help you walk away.

And sometimes you'll fall, sometimes you won't. How he tempts us, there's three ways basically how he's tempting us, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the pride of life.

For all those, or for all that is in the world, the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and the pride of life is not from the

Father, but is from this world, and it's from Satan, doing this.

And then his main lie to all of us is to be like God. So way, way in the beginning, when we started the apology, the apologetics course,

I had said, in a very simple paradigm, there's two main things that are happening, and then everything extends from that.

Either we believe in a sovereign God, or we believe we can be God. So those are the two premises that start, and then they start to break out, and everything that happens from this world, either through spiritual forces or our own bad judgment, there comes to the fact that we feel we have control, that we want to be like God.

And so that is a constant theme that Satan does, and it can happen from the beginning, from the

Garden of Eden. Each one of these temptations arises from the area of God -given desire, but it's taken beyond the limits of scripture.

So his lying is not direct lying, his lying is bending the truth, using

God's truth, bending it enough, and that turns into a lying paradigm.

And he uses three areas of temptations, with Eve as well as with Christ. And so I want to take a little time about this.

So how it tempts us. And so there was a cause there, it says, now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the

Lord had made. And he said to the woman, and mind you, as I'm reading this, look at the way the equation works, how it all happens, and it has not changed even today.

Did God actually say? So the lie begins of trying to confuse you, of saying, well, what did he actually say?

You know, what is he actually doing? In scripture, the same thing in terms of interpretation. Is that what scripture really means?

Are you sure that's what's going on there? That you shall not eat of the tree of the garden. And the woman said to the serpent, we may eat the fruit of the tree in the garden, but God said, you shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it lest you die.

But the serpent said to the woman, you will not surely die, all right?

For God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be open. Now, that's the whole thing behind sin.

That's everything that we do behind sin. We look at something that's actually desiring, that's enticing us, that we want to do it, right?

With the whole idea that when we do it, yeah. I was just gonna say, there's a bit of embedded truth in that lie, though.

Yeah, but yeah. Their eyes would be open. Exactly, exactly. So it was deceitful, but there was a hint of truth in it.

Yeah, and that's usually how it works, you know? Now, how much, so the question comes for all of us is how much do we want our eyes to be open in that respect?

We live in a culture right now that's speeding up everything. We have more information at our, you know, at our heads now that we can't imagine.

We have a culture that wants to make children adults. They're going in and looking at porn at eight, nine years old, you know?

That may be enticing, that may be desiring. They have no idea, their eyes become open, and now you have a situation where.

They're corrupted. They're corrupted, exactly, yeah. And that goes for anything that happens there. And so with this, their eyes would be open, but they would be corrupted.

Right, they would be corrupted, right. And so the question is, what is death, you know?

Are we dying that way, or are we dying this other way? Yeah, John. Correct me if I'm wrong, but God didn't say you shall not touch it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, he lied. She added something. She added to it, absolutely, yeah.

Thank you for telling me that, yeah, he did. For God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be open, and you will be like God.

That's a constant thing that happens today. So anything that we do in our lives, and we go to that crossroads, there's a sense of I'm mature enough,

I'm knowledgeable enough, I'm whatever I am, to make this decision, wrong decision.

And it's this control of taking away from God's sovereignty and saying I am my own knowledge base, and I can go ahead and make this decision because I'm the one who can control everything.

I'm not sure if you're gonna touch on this. You're probably, you're going through a ton, right? But as far as making things look good and appealing,

Paul, in 2 Corinthians 11, with the false teachers, he said they, well, it says this, that such men are false apostles, deceitful workers, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ.

They sound good. And he says, and no wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light.

Absolutely. Yeah, he wants to look good for everybody. Right. Yeah, he doesn't. And we're seeing that, thank you for sharing that, and we're seeing that now within the churches, and I had touched on this much earlier in Apologetics, I'll call this tribal spiritualism, and basically creating the church of whatever it is, abortion, transgender, whatever it is, and the cultural relativism is there, which is what

Satan wants to have happen, you know? And it's a sign of paganism. He wants to do that, because he makes it like as if it's religion.

So when the woman saw the tree, and it was good, and that it was of the light to the eyes, that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of it fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate.

Notice he was with her and didn't say anything. Right, right, right. You read my mind. Yeah, right.

He abdicated his authority. He was just standing there, listening to the serpent, listening to the light. Yeah, he abdicated his authority. He should have been in command, but he didn't.

And this was also, they didn't talk about this particular passage this past weekend, but it talks about men now who are younger, and is in a marriage relationship, and they were giving some statistics about that, have a tendency to constantly want approval from their spouse, and they'll do anything to get constant approval from their spouse.

Instead of following what God would want him to do, he has a tendency that he won't do anything unless his wife checks off the box and says it's okay to do it, and that's a real barrier to what it is to be a true biblical leader in a marriage, or in any place.

And it's the same old, same old. The paradigm is here. We see it here.

It's happening. I have a follow -up on that, if I may just throw on it. What does that engender in the woman?

But contempt for her husband. She doesn't see him as a powerful leader and a provider of security.

Now she has taken over his role, and she's inadequate for that role. Right, right.

Yeah, and that constant struggle now is gonna happen all the time, and it's gonna be who's on top, who's on top, who's on top?

And then when you add children to the mix, and you do that, one of the things they had said this past weekend is that the,

Rich, I just wanna make sure I got this correct. The average guy was on, doing video games three hours, or something like that?

Like three hours a day? At least. At least three hours a day, and he's married with children, and he's doing video games three hours a day.

And they're saying, so you're doing video games, and your wife is raising your children.

And the guys are playing games. And the guys are playing games, yeah. So that kinda tells you the paradox of what's going on here.

So the result to this is that their eyes were both open, and they knew. And this is the interesting thing.

When we accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as our personal savior, the Holy Spirit dwells in us.

One of the things that he does with us is he gives us, they knew in us. There's something that's innate in us that when we do something wrong, there's this voice that happens there.

Ah, just made the wrong turn. It's happening. And it's something that's consistent with all believers, that this, the

Holy Spirit acts as our guiding light, and lets us know what's happening there. And it's true over here.

They knew that they were naked, and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves loincloths.

So what we have here is a, is basically an equation or an axiom of what sin does, wrong decision making does.

How that's changed over thousands of years, not. It's still the same. Still the same paradigm of how this all works.

But let's look at Satan tries to tempt Jesus. Okay? So Jesus was led up by the spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.

Now, when I read this, the question I had in my mind is, why would

God allow Jesus to be tempted by the devil? Like, he's already there to die on the cross.

Why would he want to do that? Like, why is there? And then it started coming to me, and then

I got some back of him, is that to show God's ultimate glory through his son, the power of Jesus Christ to Satan, the adversary, that he is controlling the world.

And that he is fully human, too. And that he's fully human, and that he's fully human. But it's hard for human beings to kind of put that in their mind, like, why would that happen?

Especially after fasting 40 days and 40 nights, he was hungry, too. So, and the tempter came and said to him, if you are the son of God, command these stones to become loaves and of bread.

But he answered, it is written, man should not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.

Deuteronomy 8 .3. Then the devil took him to the holy city, set him on the pinnacle of the temple, and said to him, if you are the son of God, throw yourself down, for it is written, he will command his angels concerning you.

And on the hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against the stone. Now, when he put him up there, they're estimating he was between 450 to 500 feet above the ground that he was there.

And so Satan was saying, just throw yourself off there, okay? What does this tell us, gentlemen, about what's going on there?

Well, it tells us that Satan knows the Bible, too, knows Scripture, too, knows the Old Testament, too.

And he's not stupid, he's gonna use it, and he's gonna use it to bend the truth there, okay? But Jesus says to him, again, you shall not put the

Lord your God to the test. Deuteronomy 6 .16. Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain, showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory, and he said to them, all these

I give to you if you fall down and worship me. It goes back to the five

I wills. Then Jesus said to them, be gone, for it is written, you shall worship the

Lord your God, and him only shall you serve. Deuteronomy 6 .13 -14. Then the devil left him, and behold, the angels came and were ministering to him.

Now, this was a battle between two beings right here.

But you had, above that, the heavenly host watching this all take place.

The dark side and the light side doing that, watching this all take place. And throughout it, and this is a lesson for all of us to do that, our best defense between what happens with our sin nature is to know this book and to be able to understand what's happening in this book.

If Jesus can use scripture to battle there, sure enough, we should be able to use that too.

So it becomes very important for us to really gain insight on what's happening, memorizing scripture, saying something to yourself in the midst of a turmoil up there.

Does anybody have any comments on this? Yeah, that happens every day. But they're twisting the truth that's in the

Bible. You see it all the time. They take little excerpts out, but they don't put it in context. It's all over the place.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it is. I'd say too that there's a little bit of, sometimes a thread in the church that folks will get the idea that the

Old Testament isn't that important. And it's not true. Well, for one, for sure, right?

And you look at those scriptures, obviously the New Testament hadn't been written yet, but we just were in Luke and Jesus was talking about the resurrection and how the resurrection is proven by the

Old Testament, which Stanley's big on the resurrection. Right, right. It was like that book you just put your hand on is the whole word of God, and we need it all.

Amen. It's his counsel to us. Yeah, Chad? Just one question. I see that you are the son of God underlined there.

I guess it's never kind of really stood out to me in that way, but is he, I mean, he obviously knows that he's the son of God.

Is he saying that so that Jesus doubts that? Or what is the point in him questioning

Jesus? I think he's taunting him. Taunting him. Yeah, he's taunting him. But I'm glad you brought this up.

So, there is debate among scholars. Did the angels know everything that was happening?

Or did they just know some things were happening? You know, and this could be a question from Lucifer, like, who are you really?

I know who God is, but who's that happening? And so there's some debate within certain scholarship circles of saying that he knew he was fully human.

It does prove what Richard was talking about. He sees him as human. He's not seeing him as God, you know?

So there's an enlightenment there, and that's kind of like where the basis of the debate is. Sure, Tim, go ahead.

Is the if there in Greek, since you are the son of God, versus actually the way we would take it?

Yeah, good point. Yeah, it kind of goes back and forth with that.

But it's interesting. And the other question that comes up is the ministering of angels that came down.

Now, did Jesus call those? Or did God send them down to him, right?

Like, on orders from God saying, go take care of my son right now, you know?

That's also an area of debate. Yeah, Rich. That reminds me of James 4, 7, when he says, resist the devil, and he will flee from you.

Right, right. So we have to, like Jesus in that example, he quoted scripture over and over again whenever the devil came to him.

We have to know the Bible well enough to command and tell the devil otherwise and to resist him, and he will flee.

It's not since, it's if. If, whether, that. It is in the

Greek. In the Greek, it's if. Yeah, it's if, okay. Yeah. I mean, clearly, you know, the devil didn't have the knowledge of everything that's going on here.

Some said it was him, you know? So, kind of like, what are you doing here?

And I almost think similar to, like, John the Baptist, you know, his calling was to testify to Jesus.

But then after a while, he's like, where's anybody? You aren't who I thought you would be. Well, we know that there's a couple verses in the scriptures.

One, when Jesus is going to cast out the demons, I think it's in Gadara. And they say, what do we have to do with you,

Jesus? We know you're the Holy One of God. And then in James, again, it talks about, you know, even the demons believe.

Like, their theology's pretty good. They might not have had the entire full picture, but their theology's pretty good as far as, you know, what they know.

And I always think they know a lot more than we do. But, yeah. Well, they knew the end result to go to the abyss.

The thing is that all these things I would give you if you fall out of worship, when he showed them the nations, right?

When he showed them the kingdoms of the world and said he would give it to them. Again, if he's God, you know,

Satan can't give him things because he's already the creator of the universe and all things belong to him anyway.

But he is the ruler of this earth right now, so he could have given them all that authority.

I still, yeah. I just, I go back to, I think he's taunting the human side of him to try and tempt that side of him.

And again, it goes back to him being fully human. Yeah. Right? And I think there's two aspects.

One, it shows that he is strong enough to withstand those temptations.

But two, it also shows that like us, he was also tempted. Absolutely. Yeah, but you know,

Matt, it's good you said it like that because that's really the heart of the debate. What you're seeing there is like how much foreknowledge did

Satan have to understand what was really going on there and what was the impact there? Because you're right.

Because logically, he's like, well, he already, God already rules all this. But he is the ruler of this earth for at least for the time being.

But God allows him to be the ruler of this earth. And that's what the, you beat me to it. Gives him the permission to do it.

Yeah, but it's true. But that's kind of like the debate. You know, how much.

His tactic has not changed that much. He says to Eve, hath not God said, creating doubt, trying to create doubt, right?

Right. And then from there, she adds something that he never added. Right. So then he can come right out and say, you shall not surely die.

He creates doubt. He gets man to add to it. And then he comes right out and denies.

Gets you to, tries to get you to deny. Right. His tactic hasn't changed. No. Thousands of years.

And the application for us, Rich, is that if Satan's doing, is going to do this to Jesus, how much more are they going to do to us?

You know, and that's really key there. And our responsibility and our allegiance and our loyalty to God is to be aware of what is happening there.

And there's so many, unfortunately, so many believers that are just, they have blinders on.

They go through life and they're not, they're not understanding whatever.

And when something happens, then it's like their whole world implodes. The more we have a good idea of what this is, the better it is for us to prepare for the ups and downs that are going to happen in our lives.

You know, particularly in our pathway sanctification, which, you know, as we know, it's always going to be like that.

There's always going to be something that's going to trip us up in our lives. So we have to be brilliant.

Go ahead, John. I think it's important to realize that temptation is not sin.

Yes. Yeah, correct. Yeah. One more thing.

The serpent, what he did to Eve, in today's vernacular, he made her believe in her truth.

Not the truth. Right, right, right. So now I may just throw that one out. And unless you really dig into the book and live by the word, you'll continue to have your truth.

Yeah, absolutely. That's... Yeah. Going all the way back to Drew's first lesson.

Yeah. About truth. It's always under attack. Yeah, it is always under attack.

So where is Satan headed? Satan, future doom is in, you know, Genesis 3 .15,

Isaiah 14, Revelation 12 and 20. He knows this. See, so the amazing paradox about this is he knows how this is all going to end, just like we know through Revelation how this all ends.

So his only job for his self is to kind of push it away, continually trip up everyone and push it away because he knows with the end result how it's gonna end.

So scripture records his final demise in two stages, at the end of tribulation and at the end of the millennium.

In previous classes or meetings, Matt, you talked about this with your eschatology.

And the fifth angel blew his trumpet and I saw a star fallen from the heavens to earth and he was given the key to the shaft that the bottomless pit.

So he knows all this. So spiritual warfare, there is a cosmic war.

Most churches ignore this. And it's a shame that they do. It's really an indictment against the church to not really talk about this.

We are part of God's image. We have almost all the attributes that God has.

We'll have even more, his holiness, when we get there. But there has to be an understanding where we fit in the wholeness of God's creation.

And you don't have to separate it, but at least have a clear understanding and sort of respect that this is really what's happening all around us.

And it helps us in our growth. It also helps us in our peace and our joy with our

Lord to really understand, okay, I don't have to be scared about a nuclear war that's gonna happen in Ukraine.

We don't have to worry about that. We know what the end result's gonna be. There is a war. And regardless of our opinions, it's happening now.

It happens all around. They take advantage of our foolish sin choices.

To John's point, there's no sin and temptation. But we're on a precipice on doing something wrong, and they're there to knock us through it.

They will convince us as we convince ourselves with our own free will to make the wrong decisions.

That's what they do. So the greatest lie is Satan's greatest weapon is that he does not exist.

Now, when they talk about evil, people have this idea in their mind, yes, there's evil, it's man -centered evil.

Well, what about the devil? Well, that's a conjured up thing that happens there.

Those people that are into occult, they fool around with that, but that's kind of a religion on its own. Then you have the

New Age -y people, and they kind of think of that. But universalism, humanism, is what really captures all of that.

The devil's really not the driver of all this. And so he plays on that.

He wants to make sure that he is in the background, that the focus is not on him to do as much damage as he has.

That's true. The best tactic an enemy can use is to get you to believe he doesn't exist. Doesn't exist, right.

So demonic forces will test our loyalty to Christ. They will always test our loyalty. That's the zero -sum game in this, is that are we loyal to our

God, to our Christ, to our Holy Spirit? Are we loyal to that? And they're always gonna make you question.

So those in Christ cannot be possessed. However, believers can be oppressed, harassed, influenced by demonic forces.

I can tell you from personal experience with my wonderful wife, Joyce, who's in behavioral health, probably more than half the patients there are spiritually possessed.

And they can stay, and it's very common for Joyce to go into a patient area and they know that she is in Christ.

They'll scream at her, saying, you're a Christian, or you're this and you're that, and they'll go into a fit over it.

Sometimes it gets really bad where they have to call Dr. Strong, which means security, to get it there. But it happens so often that it's almost, it's very common.

Satan's main prey is the church. He doesn't have to worry so much about people who do not believe in Christ.

He isn't concentrating on the church. He wants to disillusion them, make them question their faith, make them move away through sin, through anything possible.

He will try to do that. They want to stop the Great Commission. That's what they want to do.

End of story. So, how do demons work? Deception, the

Garden of Eden would start. Murder, torture, blindness, dumbness, deformities, physical sickness, mental madness.

Today is now sexual deviancy. Homosexuality is the highest it's ever been, at least in my lifetime.

Pedophilia is becoming more commonplace. Young children that are getting more involved with pornography.

So, all this is part of the deception to blind what's gonna happen there. Government influence.

In Psalms 82, there's debate about divine counsel and all that stuff, but the end result is that there is spirits that also influence people, that influence government, that influence how we live.

Probably the worst example, at least in biblical times, was Nero, who finally took

Paul as a martyr, who was burning Christians up as making a blind post.

So, we know what they can do there. They work on hindrance of the work of the gospel, hindrance of prayer.

Sometimes I'm like this, I'm praying and my mind is full of thoughts and I cannot get my thoughts out of my mind so I can pray, and it bothers me.

And I'm saying, Lord, please get rid of these things so I can just concentrate on what I wanna talk to you about.

So, yeah, so hindrance of prayer, harassment of God's people. We know today, promotion of idolatry, witchcraft, pagan occult practices.

That had started in the beginning. We can go to the Old Testament there, terms of paganism, the worship of Baal, just for some examples.

Strange occurrences and deceiving miracles. Now, we know that the Antichrist is going to do what they call miracles, but it is deception, and a lot of believers are gonna walk away from the faith being tricked by this.

Rich got me turned on to this whole thing about aliens through Billy Crone, and who made, well, he makes a pretty good case about these aliens being demonic forces, you know, it's doing that.

Isn't it funny that we're seeing a lot about UFOs today?

And we're seeing that in a lot of common places. I'll send you some pics on that. Hey, the Borg are out there.

What? The Borg are out there, and you will be assimilated. Right, you will be assimilated, right.

Resistance is futile, let's say. Resistance is futile.

Resistance is futile. And then slandering and accusing those in Christ. So that's the, that's happening all over.

Unfortunately, it's not happening as much here in the U .S., but in places where the gospel is really penetrating

China, India, those people are being tortured there.

So, let me see where we're at here. Oh, my, wow, can you two, no. Perfect timing.

I know, so final thoughts here. So remember that each of our temptations arises on an area of God -given desires, but it's taken beyond the limits of scripture.

So the initial idea is to, for a healthy sexual relationship, is to have it with a partner there.

Our sin is pushing it beyond that, outside of marriage or whatever demons that we have there.

But the idea is there that sex is good, it's not bad. We cannot defeat

Satan and his minions alone. We cannot do that. We have to rely on our

Holy Spirit and the Lord to do that. We need to do that. Christ's glorious victory over temptation gives us confidence that we too can overcome temptation.

That's a great example of a case study of how to defeat temptation there.

Being in Christ, we have the Holy Spirit petitioning in every area of our lives all the time.

So if you can imagine, and this is a wonderful thing about grace, our Holy Spirit's inside us, and he's always fighting for us, always, on every area in our lives.

The idea of free will and spiritual forces fighting is what goes against that.

But he will fight for us. We have tools from scripture to overcome temptation, from the tempter, and we have acquired

God's grace through Jesus' sacrifice and our justification through him when we believe. And our faith is our confidence that God defeated

Satan, and we have this inside of each of us. So we have the insurance that at the end, everything will be turned right.

What a wonderful way to look at life, that regardless of the chaos that we're living in right now, that in the end, and you know,

I'm so, I don't wanna say this phrase, God wins, because I hear everybody saying now, believers and non -believers, in the end,

God wins. Well, we know that as believers, understanding what happens in Revelation. But I don't wanna dumb it down that there,

God has control, he has sovereignty over everything. He knows what's happening. He has his reasons why, while he's allowing it to happen there.

Our role there is to continue with the Great Commission. Our role there is to live a Christ -like life as best as we possibly can, and also to understand that in grace, we will fail at times, but thank you,

Lord, that there's grace there to lift us back up, and always put us there. Okay, gentlemen?

So that's the end of that. What, I have more material on this thing, but I'm gonna put that on to upload, so if you wanna learn some more, there are some scholarship papers that's gonna be on there too, too, if you wanna get more in depth with this.

And just, gentlemen, do you have any questions or anything? I just wanted to share another

Bible verse. Sure, sure. Psalm 34, verse seven. The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear him, and delivers them all.

Delivers them from everything. Coming against them. Yes? So, I just think that the more awareness we have of this, that we put it in the back of our minds, and know that what we're living in right now is under control, and that God will deliver on all of us, hopefully soon in the future.

And I just wanna emphasize something you said earlier, which is, he likes to package things as they look good.

They're slick, and they're pretty. And I wanna read a verse from 2 Corinthians chapter 11.

It says this. But I'm afraid, lest as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, your mind should be led astray from the simplicity and the purity of devotion to Christ.

For if one comes preaching another Jesus, whom we have not preached, you receive it well.

Because that's one of the biggest attacks we have, is like, oh, that teaching doesn't sound that bad.

Or, that group, they're not quite teaching the truth, but it sounds good.

And you've mentioned the truth war that MacArthur put out, and it's like, yeah, the truth is important.

And when you try to bend it, and twist it, and get subtle, it's important we stand for the truth.

Absolutely, Drew. One of the challenges that I had, personally, when putting this all together, is not to put my viewpoint in this, unless it's backed up by scripture, you know?

And the problem is, there's a lot of assumptions, and people just make their own statements.

But it's not based on the truth of scripture. You'll hear people just like this say, my truth.

They'll say, my Jesus wouldn't put down that thing. Exactly. And the thing is, is there is no my

Jesus. Yeah. There's just the creator of the universe, Jesus. Exactly.

Matt, David Jeremiah says, when somebody says to him, my Jesus, he says, your Jesus doesn't exist.

He's a figment of your imagination. Yeah, we all need to be Bereans. We all need, whatever

I say, or whatever Matt says, or whatever Drew says, you really should follow up and look at scripture on that, to make sure that we're on track.

And we are accountable to each other. So we want to keep each other uplifted, and say, hey, brother, you're kind of veering off, whatever else like this, in a good way, you know?

You can have different points. I think we've been pretty good about declaring what we know is fact, and what we have opinions, like the example eschatology, some of the different views.

Right. We're clear about what to divide on, and what not to divide on.

Yeah, and the whole point of this is to, I mean, to give you some education and perspective, but the ultimate goal is to defend your faith, and to give you hope, and to uplift you in doing that.

So you have more in your toolkit to go ahead and confront whatever you're gonna be confronting, either your neighbor who says, what are you talking about, hell, you know, whatever, or work, or whatever that happens there.

That's part of what the apologetics piece to this thing is. Go ahead, Dave. I was just gonna say that Satan is a great deceiver.

And when we pray for discernment, okay, and that will be, the more time we spend in the word, that will give us that discernment.

But I look at, you know, you look at the world today, and how messed up it seems, and whatever.

You know, if people in Christ still are searching for that discernment to make sure that we are grounded in Christ, how hard is it to the unbeliever to not be deceived if even the deception that we're thrown into all the time in our daily lives, and we have to parse it out in a

Christ -like way, how hard is it for those that aren't in Christ to battle the deceiver, and how easy?

I look at the James 1 -5 right behind you, and it says, any of us that lacks wisdom, let him ask

God, give him generously without reproach, and he will give it to them. You know, it's like perfect for what you're talking.

Isn't it the craziest thing, too, where you're talking to someone who's an unbeliever, okay?

And they give you a response to what you're talking about, and in the back of your mind, it's like, all the files are saying, that's not true.

How could you even think that? And then, when you respond to them to ask for more of an explanation about what's going on there, it gets even more weird, and you're like, how can that happen?

And that's part of what you're talking about, Dave, this whole deception, and it's a reminder that it is so entrenched now within our culture, within human beings, of being, it's the easiest place to see it is in the politics, you know, of what's going on there.

You know, forget Republican or Democrats and all that stuff, but you're looking at biblical truth, and then people saying what they say, even those who claim they're a

Christian, you're like, wait a minute, you know? It doesn't make sense, and it's not my personal opinion about that, it's what

God's word says about it. And so, yeah, it's just, we're in these times, right now, where we have to be loving, we have to be educating as best we possibly can, or we have to just brush the sand off our sandals and walk away, and say, that's all we can do, besides making a stand, because a lot of people, they don't have that biblical wisdom that's happening.

Yeah, go ahead. Biblical wisdom, I consider myself a, I mean, an adolescent

Christian, and just being around all these men who are more, I see as mature in the faith,

I'd really appreciate your thoughts on that. Just some things that I picked up during this conversation, and I don't mean to belabor or keep you all on your lair.

No, no, go ahead, this is what's important. But two things in particular, talking about, you know, false teachers, doctrine, being off, you know, deceiving people in that regard.

When I heard, Drew, I don't wanna throw you under the bus or name drop you, but I heard something that Drew said, which really distracted me from, you know, a couple, as you were going on the slides, and it was just, you made a reference about Andy Stanley, about his preaching.

I'd listen, just from my point of view, I'd listen to Justin Peters, I was researching a lot of false prophets, his name comes up in terms of being off doctrinally and all that stuff.

Just hearing you say that name, it just, it concerned me.

Am I, am I off on that? Is he, is he a man of God?

Is he straight? Because I'm hearing it, otherwise. Drew, do you wanna take this?

And that troubles me. Yeah, I actually didn't say his name. I was saying that. Oh, I thought I heard

Andy Stanley. Well, he did, but the point was, is somebody who's going to throw out two -thirds of the scriptures and say it's irrelevant.

Okay, was that? It was not a good reference, Drew. Totally missed that part, I was like, oh, Drew, I love you, man.

He took great regard, I was like, Mike's gonna check out. So let me give you a quick background. About three years ago, maybe four years ago, three years or four years ago, he made a statement of saying that he believes we are living just in the

New Testament and that he's a New Testament pastor, a New Testament believer.

That the Old Testament is antiquated, doesn't really apply in today's world, and that we should not so much disregard it, but not give it as much weight, relevance, to what's happening there.

And he made that statement, and his church has thousands of congregants in it.

And so he made that statement, which caused a ripple. I think part of the ripple that happened was his father,

Charles Stanley, has ministry for Lord knows how long.

40 years. Yeah, and very solid following. And then his son, who did this, who has a pretty big following of his own, makes this statement, and it caused a division line about what's really going on there.

I think he also referred to his expository preaching as like lazy. Right. Cracking on that, too.

It's like, just stuff I was disagreeing with. Well, yeah, expository has its place, you know.

It all depends on what the subject matter. In reform orthodoxy, more times than not, is we usually go verse by verse, chapter by chapter, and talk about the relevance of that.

What was the second one? The second one dealt with how demons work, promotion of idolatry, witchcraft, and pagan occult practices.

My youngest son, 16 years old, he just recently started taking up an interest in dungeons and dragons, that type of stuff.

In my household, growing up, it was the devil.

It's the devil in this and the, you know. But you can either see it as just a game, but other people can also see it as something more sinister and dark.

I mean, just from people's thoughts here, what, is that something that just,

I need to just time out, or just see it as, he finds it interesting with the characters and just the storylines?

Yeah, I'm not, I've never really played dungeons. I think it's overblown. Yeah. Okay.

I mean, you look at many of the role -playing games, RPGs of today, are based off of old dungeons and dragons, which is like rolling dice, and it's just a more sort of manual way of playing some of those games.

And I think that it really more, who's he hanging out with, right? What is their influence?

The game itself is, it can be innocent or it cannot be innocent. It has more to do with the people than it does the game.

See, and that's the thing, the people who plays these games with are confessed atheists. They have no, even still.

I don't think the spirit's gonna lead you in all that, though. Because I think if you took a consensus of everyone in here, like of what

TV show was good or what movie was good or whatever, we will come up with different opinions on certain things.

And it's not to say that one person is more holy than another one or more right than another one.

But we need to really follow the Lord's leading in all those things. You know, read the scriptures, see what it says, and he will lead you and guide you.

If it's a stumbling block for him and it's taking him down a bad path, then it's harmful to him.

Just like different people have different, vice,

I don't wanna call it a vice. Different people are tempted by different things. And the same thing can have a different impact on two different people.

So really what I would do is I would monitor his behavior and if it starts to take a turn, then yeah, you might wanna consider how that's influencing him.

Otherwise, I don't think the thing in and of itself, that that game in and of itself is evil.

Like if he was messing around with a Ouija board, I might get concerned here. But rolling some dice and pretending that you're walking through a dungeon and you encounter a monster, that's just a game.

Like you hear about gateway drugs, and there's no pot and leads to heroin, something as innocent as playing

Dungeons and Dragons game. Who will lead to it? I'd be more worried about who he's playing with than what he's playing. But I think that's something that you can keep your ear to.

I mean, right now, most of the media is creating characters that are trying to be godlike, either superheroes or whatever they wanna do.

You know, and that should be kind of a wake -up call to us that this is the, why all of a sudden this god stuff that's happening to these superheroes, you know?

And - It's not really all of a sudden, it's been in the comic books for years. But yeah, it is in the comic books. But more, it's like more movies than ever before is really concentrated on that.

And so, that can kind of be a schism of like what the forces are doing out there, why are they pushing that on there, that the superheroes are there.

We have the greatest superhero ever. You know, it's God. Why do we need to have Thor? You know, or why do we need to have, you know,

Spider -Man? You know, and I'm not, I'm not, I'm not downplaying. These are drawn,

I mean, the Marvel characters are just Marvel characters, but they were drawn from, you know, whether it's

Norse mythology, Greek mythology, right? Right. But now it's more prevalent all over, and it's in our faces.

I'm not saying to set the alarm on, but I'm just saying just be aware of what's happening there. Go ahead. But there's also like blatant deception.

Like right now, there's something called COP 27. I don't know if you're familiar with that. But they are, the

Pope and the spiritual leaders have gone to Mount Sinai to create a new

Ten Commandments of environmental sustainability. I can send it to you.

Wow. It's all about, we have to ask forgiveness for the planet and all that we've done to, with CO2.

The Pope is involved in this heavily. It's called COP 27. They're meeting now, and it's, they're in Egypt, and it's like three weeks, and they want reparations from all of the

Western countries to change the direction of the planet and all this stuff.

And the Pope is heavily involved in it. And they actually have these tablets with these new

Ten Commandments. I mean, you talk about the deception and how young people are so attracted to this kind of vitriol.

Like, oh wow, yes, we care. We care so much that we need a new Ten Commandments.

It comes from a lack of purpose. Has anybody heard of COP 27? Georgia Guidestone?

No, it's different. I'll send it. Yeah, send it. Yeah, please send it to us. Yeah. It's going on right now in Egypt and Mount Sinai and whole nine yards.

But that's what's gonna end up happening. You know, and. But we shouldn't be surprised. It's all part of the

UN. It's all part of the UN. It's all part of the World Economic Forum. World Economic Forum.

Yeah. Yeah. It's Schwab. Yeah, yeah. That's right. So I have a quick story.

So here's a quick story. So I'm talking to, and I'm a believer.

And this is a few years back. And I told him that, you know,

I'm a Christian. Jesus Christ is my personal savior, blah, blah, blah. And he says to me,

I don't wanna believe in God. And I go, why? And he goes, I go, you believe there's a

God? And he goes, yeah, but I don't wanna believe in a God that would send his army into a tribe and destroy, kill everything.

Man, women, children, animals, everything. What kind of a

God is that? And I was like, wow, you really know, how'd you know that?

And I said, the biggest mandate that God had given us is to keep holy, to make sure we continue to be holy.

And God knew that going into this area would make people compromise on what they're gonna be doing from a cultural aspect, from a spiritual aspect, from a family aspect.

He knew it beforehand. But what ended up happening anyway? I told him that.

I said, the Israelites did it, they did it. And within 10 years of doing that, they were worshiping

Baal, they were sacrificing children of Amalek, they were doing everything they possibly can.

So he was trying to do the best interest for people involved, but those who are not under God.

And he kind of just paused, just listened, didn't give a response. But if you don't know this, if you don't read this and understand the reasons why things are happening, it really sets a precedence of what's gonna happen in the future.

Now, with that, it's not a surprise that they're gonna be doing that. I'll send it to you. Yeah, yeah.

You'd be interested. Right. Okay, gentlemen. Well, thank you so much for this.

Drew, can you close us out in prayer? Father, I thank you for Ivan's preparation.

I thank you for this class. Lord, I pray that, Lord, as we take a lot of information in,

Lord, that you would press these things upon our hearts. We'd study the scriptures and check everything out, make sure that we understand what's going on in the worlds that you've created,

Father, and in the spiritual world that is beyond our sight, Father, but not beyond our perception because of your

Holy Spirit and because of your word. Father, we thank you, Lord, that the good news that Jesus Christ has defeated

Satan for all time, Lord, and that, yes, he does have some things going on right now.

He's called the ruler of this world. But, Father, we know the end story and we know that he who is in us is greater than he who is in this world.