Should we fear the "unseen realm"?

Hello, hello. Welcome everybody to Biblically Speaking. My name is Cassian Bellino and I am your host. The topic for today is understanding the unseen realm and the dichotomy of demons and how they work.

I'm here with Dr. Josh Waltman. Welcome to the show. I wanted to discuss this because in my version of the Bible, Satan is like a main character, a main antagonist, and then he's got a bunch of minions kind of doing his bidding.

But based off of what I've learned from you, from watching the unseen realm, and just like the conversations I've had with others, you can shed a light on it's much deeper than that. There's main players and it's not just Satan.

It's not just his minions. There's a lot of demonic forces when it comes to spiritual warfare that kind of play a part in pulling us away from God. Yeah, I'm really excited to have the conversation here.

I mean, how did we connect? We connected basically through Tim Jahns, who's been on the show a couple times. You work closely with him? Yeah, so we've been friends for a long.

Time. Tim and I actually went to undergrad together, of all things. We've stayed connected through the years. He went off and did a PhD at a school in North Carolina, and I did one in South Carolina. We just kind of kept up with one another as friends.

But he's involved at the school that I work in as well. So I teach at the seminary here at Liberty, Liberty Theological Seminary, and he is involved with putting together a number of mission trips and a lot of the community service opportunities in campus shepherding types of things, which is really, really important work that he does.

So we see each other in passing quite a bit. That's cool. And how did you come.

To know so much about this specific topic when it comes to spiritual warfare in the unseen realm?

Yeah, you know, I actually kind of feel like this is one of those areas of theology that you spend your lifetime studying, and it's just, you're always learning. You're always growing. And so I shudder to even say, hey, I know so much.

This has been a topic of interest for mine for a long time. I was a pastor. I have been a pastor for well over a decade now, and I'm probably kind of a weird interview here because I spend a lot of time, I would call myself a musicianary, a professional musician and playing in places.

Yeah, and so playing Christian rock in places that wouldn't normally hear the gospel. Wow. And so I've had some encounters in that way. And I also happen to be a professor. I have a PhD in theology and apologetics from Columbia International University.

And so this particular topic of mine, or excuse me, interest of mine, the last few years, really, I have noticed that I've just had an uptick of questions from students, from family, from friends, from other pastors, other ministers.

And really, just because I'm the theologian that they know very often, it has caused me to go and do my own research and try to beef up my understanding of these things. Obviously, we've studied this in order to get a degree in theology.

You have to study this, but this caused me to go and talk to some people that I wouldn't normally talk to that are sort of practitioners in the field, so to speak, and really give them a listen. Hearing folks that are involved in, say, deliverance ministry and hearing from folk, reading scholars that aren't your typical folks that you would read in a systematic theology class.

Okay. And so somewhere along the lines, the last, I don't know, decade, I was introduced to Mike Heiser's work, which you referenced a second ago, and it's called The Unseen Realm for your.

Listeners. Yep, check it out on YouTube. It's insane. It's great video. It's really, it's kind of.

Like a paradigm shift, like it changes so much of how you use scripture. And I'm not going to say, he's really more of a popularizer. He took a lot of scholarship, the conversations that were happening on a scholarly level, and made them accessible and sort of brought this together in a systematic way.

Brilliant guy, did a great service to the church in that way. But obviously, it's some controversy there, too. It's not like everyone agrees with some of these things. The unseen realm is a speculative sort of topic.

You know, how do we, scripture isn't always explicit. And so, yeah, that's been my journey and trying to help friends that have come to believe, have, encountered some of these entities and have a practical need to help them, in addition to maybe.

Dealing with it theologically. Yeah, I'm sure you're getting calls like, my gosh, there's definitely a presence in my house versus like, I'm being demonized by this demon of anxiety. Like, do your friends just call you?

They're like, what do I do now? Or is it more of a conversation.

Of like, who do I go to? Yeah, I think it's a really important question because for a long time, our culture has operated, just to get into the weeds a little bit here. It's always just been assumed, I'll use the worldview that we'll call naturalism, that all there is, is a material world and all there is, is what can be studied in a test tube using the scientific method.

And our culture has shifted somewhat in that, at least in the popular arena. And, you know, you turn on Netflix and there's a supernatural drama or, you know, there's always something going on. People are more open to witchcraft and new age religions and all kinds of things.

And so as people in my sphere of influence have dabbled in that, that's just brought up new ways of engagement and dialogue in the apologetic realm. And, you know, I've seen people that come to know Jesus when they were dating witches.

And now we've got to deal with, yeah, it's like now we've got to deal with, all right, well, what do we do with all of the witch paraphernalia that they left in their bedroom? You know, so it's just the world we live in.

Oh my gosh. Yeah. I, I completely agree with you that it is like everything we do on earth is very physical and then we die and we go to heaven. And that's when we experienced the demons and the angels and all the things, but the spiritual warfare is so real.

And if we're going to watch a show about vampires for six seasons or whatever it is, you know, those people, like those are real. And I think that has been some of the realist, the realizations that I've really come to on this podcast is like these things, when it comes to witches and ghouls and goblins, those things that we like were taught were monsters and they're not real, they are real and they do have power and the spiritual protection is so needed.

So when it comes to kind of this paranormal activity that we experienced today, would you say that that is like part of this unseen realm of like demons that are kind of antagonizing us in our closeness with God?

Or would it be more so like my guardian angel is just like battling them off my back? Like, is it just demons that we're kind of encountering? Would you say?

Ooh, such a good question. Let me see if I can unpack this a little bit. So I do think like when it comes to paranormal activity, let's say, yeah, that's a mixed bag. You know, you've got charlatans out there looking to make a buck as mediums and things like that.

But I do think some of that activity is demonically influenced or empowered by the spiritual realm. And certainly you've got some folks out there that are just, they've got maybe possibly something going on mentally or psychologically where they're believing something that's not really there.

Maybe they've got a paranoia or something like that. So I don't want to say that everything that you see in that realm is legit, but I do think some of it is. And I think that scripture is pretty clear about that.

You know, we have the resources within the Christian worldview to explain it. You know, to kind of get back to that idea of naturalism, our faith is not a naturalistic faith. We believe that God became a man, the God-man, fully God and fully man.

And we believe in a Trinity. We believe that to become a Christian, you have to be made new, regenerated as a spiritual being, no longer a slave to sin, but a slave to righteousness, all of these inherently spiritual realities.

Why not think that there are these other entities that are opposed to God? And so like, you know, when you have ghost hunters or those that dabble in the occult, witch talk, you know, if they're playing around with the witch stuff, and some of them may think it's just ironic or fun, but yeah, I'm pretty convinced that they're playing around with demonic entities, or at least potentially.

And that's a very dangerous thing to do according to scripture. Yeah. So let's back it up. Let's like, kind of start.

With the basics, because again, like I'm entering into this conversation with you of like, there's Satan and his minions that do his bidding, kind of like a screw tape letters type of setup. When we encounter Satan in the Bible, initially in Genesis, it's when he's tempting Eve.

And then I feel like the next time we see it is when we see these like fallen angels, and we have these sons of renown, and we have these Nephilim that are interbreeding with humans, and then it leads into Noah's flood.

What is that? Like, is that four different categories of demons? Or how would you properly introduce each one of those characters when they're spoken about in the Bible?

Yeah. So, you know, here's my caveat. Okay. This is my interpretation. We could talk about.

Some different options. Yeah. But this is kind of my take. This is the truth. I'm just kidding.

I have to be careful. I don't want to be, I don't want to lack humility here. Of course. Yeah. I do think that we've, to your point, a lot of people think that you've got God versus Satan. It's God and his angels versus Satan and his demons.

And those are all the players on the board, so to speak. And it's not necessarily wrong, but it's very, very, very incomplete. It seems to me like with angels, for instance, angels, there are many different types of angels.

Not all of them are humanoid. We've got instances where they've got different heads of different animals. They terrify people at times. I think the angels that we see in Isaiah that, you know, Isaiah tears his robe and says, woe to me, I'm undone.

And he's looking at seraphim and seraphim are most likely serpent-like. So winged serpents. Yeah. So we've got like really kind of terrifying serpent throne guardians, which is really interesting that we see the snake in Genesis 3.

Yeah. Satan appears as a snake. Is this a supernatural being that's inhabiting the body of an animal or is it that one of the angels, aka Satan, just is already serpent-like in appearance? So I think we've got to kind of keep that in mind.

So there are many different types of angels. The word angel just means messenger. And that doesn't necessarily mean a metaphysical category that could be referring to a role. So some supernatural entities that God creates are throne guardians and some are messengers.

We lump them all together in one umbrella, but we don't necessarily need to. On the flip side of that, there seem to be a number of different types of supernatural entities that are hostile and have rebelled against God.

And so, you know, the seraph, for instance, if we interpret Genesis 3 as a seraph, the serpent-like angel, there might be precedent for that, by the way. We've got Revelation referring to Satan as the great dragon.

So he has this serpent, you know, appearance. We also have references to demons now. What you're bringing up there is like, what's the origin story.

Of demons? Right. And it kind of like what you were just saying, it kind of feels like if you've got the nine choirs of angels, that's just from a previous discussion. So maybe you agree, maybe you disagree, but you've got an angel that, I'm a good angel and I'm the shape of a serpent.

But let's say I changed my mind and I turn against God. Now I'm a demon because like, I'm not obeying God, but I'm still that serpent. So it sounds like to me that, does that follow? Am I following.

That correctly? Yeah. Right. I think that if you've got a threshold of power that an angelic being has been given from God and his creation, that is possibly mirrored in its fallen form. So, you know, whatever role that they had previously, it's not like they become more powerful by choosing to sin.

That would be a strange thing to say, I think, but it would make sense that, you know, whatever power they had using within God's kingdom, now they're using in the kingdom of darkness. And so you could potentially have this sort of taxonomy of different types of demons that are doing different types of sins.

And maybe like with screw tape letters, you've even got this hierarchy of demons. We don't necessarily see it quite like that in scripture, but we do see different types of fallen beings. And so, and there are instances in scripture, you know, the famous passage here is, we don't war against flesh and blood, but against powers and principalities.

Well, this language of powers and principalities seems to indicate that there might be degrees of like different levels in the ranking, so to speak, of.

The other side. So it's a possibility. So you're saying that like, cause of course, like I think that I skipped over that verse and was like, Oh yeah, yeah. We don't, we don't fight against flesh and blood.

We fight against like the enemy, but you think of like an earthly enemy in that case, but it sounds like powers, like dark powers and principalities in the unseen realm. It's not just like Satan and his minions.

It's like different types of really like, like if you're in a video game, like different bosses that you have to face at the end of each level. Yeah. Something like that.

Yeah. Well, I think it was part of this discussion too, Cassie, and we have what scripture tells us, right? And we don't want to make it say something that it doesn't, but we also do our best to try to interpret what the authors of scripture were saying in their context.

What are they thinking about the origin of demons? And in addition to that, we're trying to do our best to interpret the phenomenon within the life of the church. How are we experiencing these encounters?

So many elements.

Yeah. Right. And so with this topic in particular, I actually do think it matters that we hear from folks that are maybe on the mission field that are experiencing the kinds of spiritual attacks and things that they report.

That can give us some additional insights. It never trumps scripture. We don't want to force scripture to say something that it doesn't on the basis of experience, but it is another data point, right?

And so, yeah, I think there's a lot we can talk about here. Do you want to talk about the Genesis 6 reference?

Which we talk about? I don't know. No, I think it's important to introduce when we see these. Nephilim, where did they come from? I think that's the first question I have.

Okay. So for your listener, if you've never read Genesis 6 in light of this discussion, go into yourself, pause the video and go and read it. And then this will make a little bit more sense. But in biblical studies, there's this big debate.

Who are these sons of renown, sons of God, men of renown that have had these, I would say, divine human hybrids. The Nephilim I take to be the product of fallen angels who have slept with women. And that, again, supernatural worldview, supernatural worldview of scripture.

Okay. If you're a naturalist, that's going to sound very implausible, but because I believe that.

You're saying that there were angels that loved God and then there was a portion of that that did like turned against God. So we've got a portion of angels that turned against God. They come down to earth and those angels are just called like fallen angels or like.

Yeah. So we get references to them. The men of renown could be the offspring, sons of God is the reference to the angelic beings. Now a full disclosure, this is a hot topic. And so from the time of Augustine on in church history, you'll see folks that interpret this as either human kings that are sleeping with women to produce wicked civilizations.

Or you'll see those in the line of Seth. If you look at Seth and the Genesis narrative, that's what the text is referring to. But the early church, I am talking the first couple of centuries after the New Testament is written.

There's a lot of precedent for thinking that this is being, this is referring to these fallen angels. And I think I would make the case that the New Testament itself looks at this as fallen angels. Here's an example.

We get this reference here. And I actually have a copy of scripture with me. It seems appropriate on our podcast that we look at scripture. So this is second Peter two. And in second Peter two, we've got verses four and five.

It says this, for if God did not spare the angels when they sinned, but sent them to hell, putting them in chains of darkness to be held for judgment, if he did not spare the ancient world when he brought the flood on its ungodly people, but protected Noah, a preacher of righteousness and seven others.

So we get this reference in a passage there to angels that had sinned in a great way. It's connected somehow to Noah. And those angels have already been judged or sent to the underworld as an act of judgment.

So who's that referring to in the Old Testament? I don't know. Yeah. And so there's a few options. It seems like I'm trying to go down the rabbit hole with you here. It seems like Peter, Jude does this as well, is referring to a second temple literature, a book by the name of Enoch.

Okay. It seems like he's citing first Enoch. And first Enoch, that passage suggests to us that what's going on in Genesis chapter six is fallen angels who've slept with women as an act of rebellion. And that produced these sort of offspring on the earth that are basically giants.

And so as the argument goes, if this is what Peter was thinking, and when he wrote the text, and this is the framework for his theology, why would we want to rework that as saying anything other than how he was interpreting it?

And so, yeah, I think if that's how Peter is looking at Genesis six, it's a pretty good case that we should think of it in the same way. And if that's true, that means we have an origin story for giants.

And not only that, but it helps us to maybe understand what's going on in the ancient world. We've got Mesopotamian literature that obviously the Old Testament is being written as one origin story of the history of the world, one cosmology, if you will.

There are other alternative and competing cosmologies in the ancient world that try to speak to the origins of mankind and the evil that exists in the world. One of the origin stories refers to fallen, or excuse me, spirit beings.

And this is a Mesopotamian text. We've got spirit beings that are sleeping with women and producing hybrids.

That's in Mesopotamian text?

Yes, that's right. And so, yeah, if we've got these other alternative stories that seem to align with Genesis chapter six, everyone's probably heard of the epic of Gilgamesh, probably. I would assume, you know, it's another one of those stories about the flood.

Well, it's probably the case that Gilgamesh, the hero of the story, is a giant. And he's talking to the gods to get their information and the gods are giving him special power and that kind of thing. So it seemed like the Old Testament, Genesis chapter six, is picking up on the same sort of stories that are passed down from the ancients, but the Old Testament is correcting it.

Where in these other stories, in the other alternative texts, those divine sort of spirit beings that sleep with women are doing humanity a favor. You know, they're giving humanity extra information, knowledge, technology, and so forth.

Whereas the Old Testament is saying, no, no, no, no, no. This was not a good thing because it was basically a giant middle finger to God. This is going against what God wanted for his creation. He didn't want angels to sleep with women and all of this.

So anyway, we got way off into the deep end there. But the theory goes that when you've got giants that are the product of fallen angels and humans, when those giants die, the theory says that's where we get demons.

That's one of the possible origin stories for demons. That's coming from that book that I mentioned a second ago, First Enoch, that Peter cites. Okay, whoa, my mind is just blown. So.

The demons that cause the spiritual warfare that we experience today are just the dead.

Nephilim. That is a theory. I think that there's some precedent for that theory. It's not like crazy. It's a pretty decent theory. An alternative theory is just we've got fallen angels of different stripes.

But it makes sense if we've got giants in the Old Testament, that the Old Testament would also explain where they come from and that the New Testament is picking up on that. I mean, it's not a crazy assertion.

Definitely. But this would be a different.

Spiritual warfare than Satan who taunted Jesus in the desert. Is that still kind of operating under this, like there's a head of all of this for the underworld? Yeah, it does seem like that.

There's a heavenly family and an earthly family, Adam and Eve on the earth and a number of different beings in the heavens. Adam and Eve choose to sin. And so there's an earthly fall. But there are some in the heavenly realm that have chosen to rebel and sin.

And it's not just one. There are many. And so yeah, it could be that there are a bunch of different ones, but Satan's not the only one,.

I guess is what I'm getting at there. How would the spirits or the demons of the dead Nephilim, how would that differ from the already judged demons that are currently in hell?

Good question. So we get that reference in Peter and we get the reference in Jude as well. It seems like Peter and Jude in referring to Enoch, they're explaining that the fallen angels that slept with women, those particular ones were judged by God and sort of put in the underworld.

But their offspring were the ones that produced the giants and then they were the Nephilim and so forth. But it doesn't say that there weren't other fallen entities that are also not demons, but they're fallen entities that have decided to rebel against God too.

In fact, we have precedent for thinking that because we get passages in Revelation where the great dragon, Satan, is accompanied by a number of fallen entities. And so there's a war of some sort.

What is a fallen entity?

I'm sorry, did I go too far?

My brain is breaking. No, so it sounds like there's a couple. There's the fallen men that just like were part of the OG angel group that were like, we're out. Those guys have been judged. They are in hell.

And then there's the dead Nephilim, which were the offspring. Those are currently working with us right now. But then there's fallen entities, which sounds like a different category altogether.

Yeah, I'm using that more as an umbrella term. All of these groups that have decided to fall against or rebel against God. But all of this to say, you know, if your listeners hearing this right now and thinking to themselves, oh my goodness, this sounds complex.

Yeah, I think it is. I think it's more complex than maybe what we've heard in Sunday school growing up and where. Yeah, it's just it's just Satan versus God. And that's all that there is. But I think the Bible is giving us some just like a really significant drama throughout the whole story.

The narrative is just just full of like skirmishes in the spiritual realm. The gospel brings light and into the darkness. And, you know, it's taking background. Jesus says he's come to bind the strong man that is Satan.

And, you know, the gospel, it pushes back the kingdom of the darkness. And it's not just one person in the kingdom of darkness, so to speak. So, yes, it's a lot to be said about all this. There is a lot to be said about this.

Now,.

If I go out on a limb, this was something that you kind of mentioned a little bit earlier. And I think it is interesting to note how other like if Nephilim were on the earth, that's a physical being that's like what, nine to 12 feet tall.

Like that's that's, you know, any it's like you and me on earth, like it will be remembered. It'll be stored in history. If I'm going to like aggregate all the content I've ever consumed about this, you look at like ancient Egypt and it's like, well, who built the pyramids?

And there's weird hieroglyphics that kind of look like aliens or giants. Or is that what you were referencing when you were like other civilizations saw it as a good.

Thing? Well, let's let's talk about this for a second, because we can get way off into conspiracy land on this one pretty quickly. And I don't necessarily want to take us there. But I do think the world before the flood.

OK. And in scholarship, that's called the antediluvian world, the world before the flood. A lot of people think I think in our Sunday school minds, we just assume that this is just you know, this is just civilization that's super primitive.

There aren't necessarily cities or technology of any sort and there's no organized religion. But that's really not what we see. I think what we're seeing here is a collective, collaborative act of religious rebellion against the God of heaven.

I mean, God decides to flood the world because he's angered at what he's seen. Well, and so so, you know, OK, that's pretty significant. What kind of what kind of world would evoke that response from God?

Like it's a it's a recreation of that. He's almost like starting over. So I think we've got a world where people have collectively decided to worship these false gods or come up with religions that worship other deities other than the most high God of heaven, the true God, Yahweh.

And God decides, God decides to start over in a recreation event with the flood. And so, yeah, with that, I don't think that we've got overly primitive people, at least know they're not walking around with iPhones, but they are able to construct buildings and temples of different sorts.

And how old are the pyramids and those kinds of things? Old Egypt, as they call it, that's that's a perennial question in Egyptology. I definitely think that we're seeing more and more evidence of what's going on in the ancient, ancient world.

And it's it's much more advanced than I think we just kind of assumed before.

Wow. And it's my job to bring in the conspiracy theories and it's your job to tell me which ones are absolutely out of whack. But I think that you're totally right. I mean, if I think about pre-flood, it seems very primitive and then they just kind of wipe it out, start over.

But you're so right. What would kind of evoke that response? It's also hilarious because God created the heavens and the earth. We go through Noah's flood. We have the Abrahamic religions and 12 tribes.

And then he comes down off Mount Sinai. And it's like, OK, guys, you just met God that brought you out of Egypt. You already have a golden calf. You already. Right. You know, and then you look at today like full of idolatry.

Like you said, I used to be scared because I thought that this world was kind of like, oh, we are so screwed. But I'm like, oh, this is kind of like so predictive. Like this is who we are as people. This is our human nature is to like be doubtful and not trust.

And like God's like, please trust me. Please trust me. Like don't worship anything else other than me. But that is really interesting that this concept, it's so much less, I don't want to say like sinister, but kind of like spooky of like who were these entities visiting and helping build the pyramids?

It's like, well, this kind of checks out like if there are these half like demigod.

Beings. Yeah. You know, think about it like this. Who did the Egyptians worship? Well, the Egyptians worship Ra. Well, who is Ra? You know, and I would I would be inclined to say that that's inherently a fallen angel of some, you know, or demonic.

The Greeks are, they're recognizing their own pantheon of demigods and so forth. Well, who are they? Even people, I mean, if you look at,.

If you look at the accounts themselves. I love this topic. Oh my gosh, keep going.

Accounts themselves. Even people like Plato and Socrates reference spiritual agents that they're communing with. Or Plato actually references spiritual agents in the heavens, but Socrates references a spirit guide of sorts.

It's really interesting. Really? Yeah. Right. So we think of Socrates is like the most rational of all people, you know, the most inclined to ignore spiritual agents. But that's that's not how the Greeks thought.

The Romans have their gods. The Babylonians have their gods. The Sumerians have their gods. And what we're seeing is that the one true God is the God of Israel. And so, you know, I would look at those instances even in scripture.

We've got a couple of references. Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28 are the two that often get brought up here. There's a, there's like, it's like a heavenly God or power or spirit behind the earthly throne of the King.

Right. And so the King of Babylon comes against God's people in an earthly sense, but he's, he's thought of as sort of being empowered by his God. Right. And in Isaiah 14, that God is called Lucifer. That's where we get that title from.

What? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that's, that's the place that the word Lucifer appears in scripture. So that it's a, it's the power, it's the King behind the throne of the earthly King in Babylon. And so in Ezekiel, we get, we've got the King of Tyre, but he's described as a cherub.

And so like, there's a, there's a power behind the King of Tyre. And so what I would say is like in the ancient Near East, the King of Israel, the Davidic King, the King in the line of David is receiving power and authority from Yahweh, the true God of heaven.

And Israel and God's people are coming against the false gods of the nations that have, that are basically representing these demonic beings or agents.

These five deities. This was, I can't take credit for this. This is something that Tim Yance and I, like, again, like he has really shown me so much. And then he brought up like the divine council and he's like, Oh, you've got to talk to Dr. Wellman about that.

So that's a different topic for another day, but something that, something that he brought up and something you just echoed. So this idea that these houses of power, the Pantheon for Greeks, what the Romans believed in, what the Egyptians believed in, those were entities of power, but they're demonic power.

Like these are these religions. I guess I used to, in my Sunday school, I liked that the Sunday school belief of like, there's my God, but then there's all these other gods. So which one is right? Which one's the good one?

And it's this new thought that I've had is like, they're all real. Those are all gods, but gods don't obey each other. Like we have the one true God that all of them were created from, you know? And I think that if you are believing in these other religions, if you are sacrificing to Zeus, you're probably going to have some sort of supernatural response.

You know, you are working with something that is supernatural. So you're not going to hear nothing. It's not just going to echo, but is that the one true God? And I feel like when God is really fighting these, like trying to communicate with these Israelites in the ancient near East of like, I am your one true God, do not worship any other God.

This really was a paradise ship for them. Cause they're like, but we've been believing in pagan, you know, like multi gods. So I guess that's kind of hard for me to believe. Cause it seems like that was a new idea for them, but God had to be like, no, no, no.

Just believe in me. I'm all you need. I created everything in the heavens of the earth. What you're believing in is just not true. It's like idolatry. Why was that new for them? If God was here forever?

Yeah. Well, I mean, we kind of.

Talked about this, this proclivity to sin or to seek idols. And that's if I could kind of take a step back here a little bit. So when I think about spiritual warfare and you know, a lot of the stuff we're talking about here has been, some of it's been speculative quite a bit of disagreement anyway.

But what I'm about to say is not at least in Christian circle, spiritual warfare recognizes three enemies. Okay. So in the Christian tradition, we've got the flesh, the sin nature, you know, we have a desire within us to rebel against God's law.

We've got the world that is the template of, you know, a group of individual as in humanity itself has defaulted towards sin. And so those are templates and things that we see out there that are sort of imposing themselves on us.

But then we also have the enemy. And so those three by enemy, I mean, Satan and the demonic realm, the powers of darkness, those three are interconnected. Satan is very shrewd in his tactics. He has deceived humanity for a long time and tempted humanity for a long time.

And so he knows how to play off of the flesh that's within us and to influence the patterns of the world so that we want to send all the more within the construct that the world has for us. And so I think in ancient world, that involved creating, you know, influence religions, civilizations, where it was easy to worship false deities or a pantheon of deities.

You know, you have a God of fertility and a God of, you know, agriculture and so forth, right? You know, how can we manipulate the gods to do what we want them to do? Today, it's the God of comfort. It's the God of ourselves.

It's the idols that we have in our civilization. And the enemy plays off of that for modern people. And so the strategies, it's all different plays from the same playbook. In the ancient world, it looked one way.