Apologetics Session 31 - Demonology

Talk today about demonology, agentology, I got some feedback and 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 something the information is there, you know, 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 want to 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 going to be uploaded to the site so people can read it when they 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.

The Unseen Realm and the Reality of Spiritual Warfare

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 going to happen, and knowing through Scripture, especially in Revelations, what the end result is going to 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.

What Demons Are and Why They Matter

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 tough it, though trial should come, let this blessed assurance control that Christ had regarded my health and sustain, and has shed his own blood for my soul.

It is well with my soul, it is well, and it is well with my soul. You should have sung it. Yeah, and you know, it's a wonderful way to capture our salvation and what it is. Going through this exercise of 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 going to be an awful time for them. 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 world. Forces can be tested by the physical senses, the sword, and scholars call it the unseen realm. It's infinitely more important than the realm of material and visible.

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.

It's like, was there jealousy? What was this? You know, 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 want to do. They want to, proverbially, kick the can down the road. They want to make sure 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 have 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, you know, we always got to 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, you know, 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.

Lucifer’s Fall and the Origins of Demonic Rebellion

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 this is 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. 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 -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 a curse him.

And the Lord said to Satan, The Lord rebuke you, O 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.

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. 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's happening there.

And influence are 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. 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've 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. However, he was part of the original creation. And was Satan perfect? No. Does Satan have free choice? Yes, just like us.

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 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 that the side of the belt against the docket. 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 you automatically cast him away.

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

The Five I Wills and Satan’s Pride

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 that as 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're going to 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 going to happen. And there's a balancing act with all that and 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 going to 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 there. Don't you know that this is his king? 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 going to 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, I 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 is going to be. We know the end results, you know, and so does he. He is 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 taking over 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 every day there's going to be a battle, and the Holy Spirit knows that, and it will always feed you something to say, this is not going to be right, and will help you walk away.

And sometimes you'll fall, sometimes you won't. How he tempts us, there's three ways, how he's tempting us, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the pride of life. And 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, hence 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 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 temptation, 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 going to 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. 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, yes. 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 the decision because I'm the one who can control.

Everything. I'm not sure if you're going to touch on this. You're probably going to go 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, 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. He wants to look good for.

Everybody. Right. And we're seeing that, thank you for sharing that, and we're seeing that now within the churches, and you know I had touched on this much earlier in Apologetics of Call, this tribal spiritualism and basically creating the church of whatever it is, you know, abortion, transgender, you know, whatever 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 wife, 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. He abdicated his authority. He should have been.

In command and 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.

Um, 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, 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, you know, it's the same old, same old. The paradigm is here. We see it here. It's happening.

I have to follow up on that if I may? Sure. 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 going to happen all the time, and it's going to be who is on top, who's on top, who's on top, you know, and then when you add children to the mix and you do that. One of the things they had said this past weekend is, um, that the, Rich, I just want to make sure I got this correct.

The average, 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, like, 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 kind of, kind of tells you the paradox of what's going on. So the result is, is that her eyes were both open and they knew, and this is the, this is the interesting thing.

When we accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as our, our personal Savior, the Holy Spirit dwells at us. One of the things that He does with us is He gives us, they knew in us. There's a, there's something that's innate in us that when we do something wrong, there, there, there's this voice that happens there, ah, just made the wrong turn, it's happening.

And, and it's something that's consistent with all believers, um, that this, the Holy Spirit acts as our guide in the light and lets us know what, 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, 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, you know, still the same paradigm of how, how this all works.

Um, 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 what? He's already there to die in 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 backup of this thing 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 and he's fully human and then he's fully human. And so, but it's hard for, it's hard for human beings to kind of put that in their mind. You're like, why would that happen? Um, especially after fasting 40 days and 40 nights, he was hungry too.

So, uh, 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 3. Okay. Then the devil took him to the holy city, set him on a pinnacle of the temple and said to him, if you are the son of God, throw yourself down for it is written. Um, 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, uh, there's estimated between 450 to 500 feet above, 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 going to use it and he's going to 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.

Uh, 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, and he said to them, all these I give to you, if you fall down and worship me.

Now it goes back to the five high 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 to 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 to 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 gain insight on what's happening, memorizing scripture, saying something to yourself in the midst of a turmoil out 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 threat in the church that folks will get the idea that the Old Testament isn't that important. Well, for one, for sure. 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.

It's like that book you just put your hand on is the whole Word of God, and we need it all. It's his counsel to us.

Just one question. I see you have, that you are the Son of God underlined there. I guess, you know, 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, you know, questioning Jesus? I think he's taunting him. Yes, taunting him. And,.

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 that were happening, you know? And this could be a question from Lucifer, like, who are you really?

I know who God is, but who, who's that happening? And so there's some, there's some debate within certain scholarship circles of saying that he may, he know he was fully human. It does prove what Richard's 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's, it's, it kind of goes back and forth with that, and, but it's, it's interesting, it's interesting. And the other question that comes up is, is the ministering of, of angels that came down.

Now, did Jesus call those, or did God, 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, 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, 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, to command and tell the devil otherwise,.

And to resist him. Yeah. He will flee. It's not since, it's if, if, whether that. It is in the,.

In the Greek. In the Greek, it's if, yeah. Okay, yeah. Yep. I mean, clearly, you know, the devil, you know, didn't have the knowledge of everything that's going on here. Well, they had some semblance that it was him, you know?

So, yeah, like, what, 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, wait a second, like, you aren't who I thought you would.

Be. Well, so 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, in James, again, it talks about, you know, even the demons believe. Like, their theology is pretty good. They might not have had the entire full picture, but their theology is pretty good as far as, you know, what they know.

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

To go to the abyss. Yeah. The thing is that all, all these things that 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 in 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 him 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, and, and tempt that side of him. And again, it goes back to him being fully human. Yeah. Right.

And, and I think there's, there's two aspects. One, one, he, it shows that he is strong enough to withstand those temptations, but two, it also shows that like us, he was also.

Tempted. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. But, you know, Matt, it's good you said it like that, because that's really the heart of the debate. What, what you're, what you're seeing there is like, how much foreknowledge do, did Satan have to understand what was really going on there and what, 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 and what, for the, 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, and gives him the permission to do it. Yeah, but it's true. But that's, that's kind of.

Like the debate, you know, of how much. His tactic has not changed that much. He says to Eve, hath not God said, creating doubt, trying to create doubt, 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. It creates doubt. He gets man to add to it. And then he comes right out and denies. He gets you to, tries to get you to deny. Right.

His tactic hasn't changed thousands of years. And the.

Application for us, Rich, is, 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, 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 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 of sanctification, which, you know, as we know, it's always going to be like that.

There's, there's always going to be something that, that, that's going to trip us up in our lives.