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 Yance, 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. 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. 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.

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

Unseen Realm for your listeners. Yep. Check it out on YouTube. It's insane. It's great.

Insane 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. 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 this 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 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, 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 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.

I, you know, you've got charlatans out there looking to make a buck as you know you know, 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 and, you know, to kind of get back to that idea of naturalism, our faith is not a naturalistic faith.

Yeah. 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, here's my caveat. Okay. This is my interpretation.

We could talk about some different options. Yeah. But this is kind of my take on the truth.

I'm just kidding. Right. 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 an, 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 different levels in the ranking, so to speak, of the other side.

So it's a possibility. So you're saying that like, because of course, I think that I skipped over that verse and was like, oh yeah, 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 I, 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 like the phenomenon within the life of church.

Like 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 chapter 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, you know, this is hotly, 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 like 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. And 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 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 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, 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.

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 like the dead

Nephilim. That is a theory. I think that there's some precedent for that theory. It's not like it's 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 have chosen 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 for the offspring, those are currently working with us right now.

But then there's fallen entities, which sounds like a different category altogether. Now 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 we

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.

You know, 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 yeah, it's, 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. Cause 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. Okay. 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.

And so, so, you know, okay, that 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 event. 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 that, in a recreation event with the flood.

And so, yeah, with, with that, I don't think that we've got overly primitive people, at least, no, they're not walking around the 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 like pre flood, it seems very primitive and then they just kind of wipe it out, start over, but you're so right.

Yeah. What would kind of evoke that response? It's also hilarious because he, 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, okay guys, you just met

God that brought you out of Egypt and you already have a golden calf. You already went right. You know? And then you look at today, like full of idolatry.

Like you said, I used to be scared. Cause 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, um,

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, 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 as 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 saying 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. 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 false deities.

This was, I can't take credit for this. This was something that Tim Yonce and I, like, again, like he has really shown me so much.

And then he brought up like the divine counsel and he's like, you 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 paradigm shift 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, um, proclivity to sin or to, to seek idols.

And that's, if I could kind of take a step back here a little bit. So, um, 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, you know, of disagreement anyway.

But what I'm about to say is not at least in Christian sort, 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 in 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, the 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 and the ancient world, it looked one way and our world, it looks different.

It's hard for us to imagine, shoot, you know, I would never think there's a pantheon of gods, but in the ancient world, they did that.

It was a different play. And so I think, I think that's kind of what's going on there. You just blew my mind.

I never even thought about like my comfort as a God and like the instant gratification, or maybe like the response that somebody would sacrificing to Zeus got that instant gratification, me prioritizing myself, idolizing my phone and scrolling.

Like I get that piece, I get that, that like on Instagram, whatever it is, but that is my God. And that is that have no other gods before me of like, and of course that is, that is the enemy.

He's distracting me. He's pulling me away from God. So I look to my phone first before I look to my

Bible, like, but to think of like these things of like, oh, my image, my money, my, my friends have seen, like, those are all gods.

Maybe it would have seemed they were like, they were distractions, but like, I do worship them. Like, you're right.

It's seen differently in the past of like, I'm not making blood sacrifices. So I'm, I'm good. I worship my one

God, but it's like, but I also give all of my time and energy and money not to God.

So is that not the same? Wow. Oh my gosh. Thank you for painting that picture.

That was a mind. Wow. Yeah. Moderns pour out their whole life so that they can have a bigger house and more things and get whatever it is that they think is most important in life.

And it's the same, it's the same principle. It's the John Calvin said, the human heart is like an idol factory.

You know, we, we find ways to worship things other than God and we need the help of the spirit.

We need the sanctifying work of the spirit to help us to reorient our, our desires and our love, not just our thoughts, but our love for God.

Absolutely. Oh my gosh. Well, this kind of goes into our next topic, which my gosh, this episode is flying.

I can't believe we're already halfway through more than halfway through, but kind of like we looked in the past, what are demons kind of like how we got here and how you believe we got here, but currently how we're being affected by them.

We just kind of spoke on it of like, we're worshipping this God of comfort or we're worshipping this God of like being well liked or whatever it is, but it's not the almighty

God is how, what are demons doing now? How do they demonize?

And that sounds so scary. You know, being possessed is like, I can't touch those movies.

Like I personally feel like if I watch, you know, the exorcism of who knows who like that to me is possessing my mind.

So I personally stay away from that because that's so scary, but I do believe we are being demonized more often than we think.

What are your thoughts on that? Well, you used the right word demonized. Let me, let me maybe paint the picture of what people typically think and then it may be if I could modify it a little bit.

So typically when people talk about what are demons doing, how do they impact us? People typically say, look, we've got demonic oppression and we've got demonic possession.

Hmm. I don't know if you've ever heard those terms before. Not oppression. Okay. So it's this idea that demons can torment human beings sort of external to themselves, like without inhabiting us, right?

They can make us sick. They can tempt us. They possibly can speak, speak into our mind's eye or something like that.

Give us some sense of, you know, impression or influence that would be oppression.

But then possession, the way that this paradigm typically goes is where the demon inhabits or indwells us internal to us, right?

Metaphysically. And that in those instances, there's an element in which our choice is taken away, at least at certain points.

And in those instances, we are the example that we see in scripture in Mark, we get two passages.

One is Mark 5, one is Mark 9. We've got the demoniac where a legion, like an entire army of demons are inhabiting this person.

And this person is being given supernatural strength by the demons. No one could hold him down, but he was living in a tomb and he was cutting himself.

It's like being tormented by these demons and Jesus cast them out. And we get this other reference to the little boy that's brought to Jesus.

And there's a demon that's inhabiting him and causing him to try to commit acts of suicide, jumping into the fire, trying to drown himself in the river, that kind of thing.

And when Jesus talks to him, he falls down and convulses. And so there's this like, oh my goodness, the demon is having a physical impact on this child.

And so those would be instances of the way that people typically refer to this possession. The movies talk about possession and things like that.

Now, what often gets said is that Christians can't be possessed. They can be oppressed.

They can be attacked from the outside, but the demon can't come into the inside. I actually don't really, it's not that that's exactly wrong, but I think it's more like there's a scale of demonization.

We don't see the words possession and oppression in the original Greek in the

New Testament. Those are English categories that we put on it. I think the demons attack human beings for a variety of reasons.

And in the instance of Christians, they can only do so much because we are indwelt by the Holy Spirit. So it's not like they can kick the

Holy Spirit out or something like that. But I do think that they can really significantly impact us.

Sickness, dreams, temptation. And when I say dreams, I mean nightmares,

I suppose. Thoughts of anxiety or lack of self -worth, guilt, all of those kinds of things.

What ends up happening is I think it's when we aren't resisting the devil.

It's when we're sinning in an ongoing way, in a habitual way. I think even as Christians, the demons aren't kicking the

Holy Spirit out. There's nothing that can separate us from the love of God. But when we choose to sin,

I think in some sense, we can be inviting demonization. And sometimes when we're not, I mean, sometimes

I was about to say, when I started this podcast, my family was like, good luck, girlie.

You need to be praying for that armor of God. It definitely makes sense when I'm welcoming in sin, I'm drawing farther away from God versus near to him.

But when I started this podcast, I was talking about God all the time, bringing fellowship to my friends who weren't very

Christian. My relationship suffered, my peace suffered. Even right now, you were like, oh,

I have taxed your anxiety. I'm like, I have had so low self -worth all day. And when you get into this headspace, you're like,

God, can you just tell them to back off? I know at this point, it's not part of my identity because I'm so aware of this is just an attack and it's annoying and it's inconvenient, but I do have worth, but right now

I just don't feel it. So God, if you could give that back or everything I have is from God.

So if I'm going to get worth, it's only going to come from God because Satan's trying to make me think that I don't have it. Amen.

Yeah. That's good word. Yeah. I want to be careful though. I don't want to give Satan, I don't want to give him too much credit.

I think it's complicated. The Christian life is complicated. Not everything is the result of a demon.

It could just be that we have fallen bodies and our bodies are broken and we've got issues sometimes, or I don't think every mental health concern is a result of demonization.

But I think that the enemy can exploit mental health concerns. So the spirit realm is interacting in a complex way with the human being because we're complex.

When I choose to sin, I actually think that that has physiological effects on me.

Obviously, if I'm choosing to be gluttonous, it's going to change my body. But also, if I'm choosing to entertain covetousness,

I'm sort of lusting after things that don't belong to me in my mind and heart, that's actually going to have an impact on my wellbeing physically.

If I'm not allowing the gospel to permeate my mind and heart regularly,

I'm going to not feel the best physically. So yeah, I think the whole thing is complicated, but it kind of goes back to those three enemies of spiritual warfare

I was talking about. When we sort of give ourselves over to the lust of the flesh, what ends up happening is

Satan exploits it and uses that to twist the knife, so to speak, make us ineffective in ministry and in relationships.

It also has the impact of making us feel shame and guilt. I don't think that's from God.

So yeah, I think all of those things are part of what the devil does. Now, I'll tell you what has happened for me.

I think just before you get into that, I think that the word that you used, exploit, is such a great way of capturing that complexity of like, sure, if I'm gluttonous and I eat everything, physiologically,

I'm going to feel bad. That's why God's like, maybe just don't do that. But then the devil does kind of capitalize and create this because by no means am

I going to say if you have depression, it's because you are demonized. There are other factors that are in play of imbalances, trauma, all these things.

But at the end of the day, the devil will jump on something that's already happening with you to make it worse, to make it seem hopeless, to kind of capitalize and not just give you anxiety, but also give you depression, not just give you gluttony, but give you that low sense of self -worth.

A lot of that could have been decisions. It could have been disposition. It could have been something that happened to you, but it could also be a spiritual warfare.

So I just wanted to echo that, but you're completely right. I wouldn't say it's one thing or another. That's good.

I'm glad you said that. He's like a roaring lion seeking to devour whom he may.

He hates us. The demonic realm hates us. So the quicker that we can realize that we have a real enemy, the quicker we can kind of get our head in the game a little bit here.

He is seeking our harm. And I think ultimately, he wants to hurt

God. He's out to hurt that which God loves. And he's shown us favor as we're his people.

And he sent his son, and his son had victory over him and the powers of darkness and over our sin.

And so he hates all that. And he hates our families, and he hates our churches, and he hates any kind of health or progress we've made.

He hates all that. So he's actively opposed to it. But he's coming against us. And I see it in scripture, resist the devil and he'll flee from you.

We get this idea of testing the spirits. Why do we need to test the spirits? There are passages that actually equate false teaching with being the doctrine of demons.

What do you think would be a good way for someone to test the spirit of like, oh, this is my intuition. This is

God, or is this like some sort of spirit misleading me? What would be a good way to kind of temp check that? Well, speaking biblically,

I think we need to look at scripture. First and foremost, we test everything against scripture. Scripture is the measuring stick or the ruler by which we can gauge the spirit realm.

The spirit realm is difficult because it's not our territory, like we're living on earth.

We're not necessarily seeing the spirits around us and things like that. It's not our turf. And we only have limited access to what's going on metaphysically.

But we do have scripture and God has given us scripture and it is sufficient to help us to interpret anything that comes up.

So I think as long as we're grounded in scripture, it will help us to, okay, what's the spirit telling me?

What is this commercial telling me? What is this TV show telling me? What is this desire that I'm having telling me?

Or what is this intrusive thought that's telling me I am not worth anything? What's the message there?

Well, let me go back to scripture. What does scripture say about my identity? Well, scripture tells me that Jesus died for me and I'm made in his image and I'm part of the family of God.

And so we combat all of those kinds of things, starting first with God's word. It is truth.

It is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path. So yeah, scripture is how we test the spirit.

It's the teaching of the apostles that we have in written form in the text.

Does that answer the question? Yeah. I mean, I wish it was simpler. I wish that I could just ask

God, all right, good or bad, but you have a good point. That's the reason it's there is to guide us.

It's meant to be used. And to be fair too, I do think that there are plenty of things that are difficult and I find myself, okay, look,

I'm having this thing that's happening to me and scripture may or may not speak to it directly. And so guess what?

The sheep know the shepherd's voice. And so I can stop, Jesus, please help me. Please help me understand what's going on here.

And I think prayer is also an effective means of asking God for help. And I think that he answers those prayers.

So if I'm acting in consistent ways with scripture and I'm not giving the devil a stronghold by sinning,

I'm resisting by not giving myself over to sin and I'm doing things like praying and the spiritual disciplines, guess what

I'm doing? I'm putting on the full armor of God. And so why do we put on the full armor if we don't have an enemy?

Yeah. Yeah. The spiritual warfare is so real and it's so prevalent and there's so many dimensions to it.

And do you like looking forward, what do you think about it? Do you feel like it's going to change at all? Do you feel like we've kind of experienced the devil's extent of like how it can work or do you think it doesn't really matter?

Like he will consistently attack us even if we live on Mars, even if AI changes, or do you feel like from a revelation or like a prophecy perspective, there are things that we should be anticipating or being like looking out for?

Well, you have me back on the show, we'll talk about the end times. But yeah, you know,

I do think that there are things that will intensify. My understanding of prophecy and the end times is that we're going to have some of that.

And there's a lot to be said there. Oh, my goodness. And there's a lot of interpretive decisions to make.

And so I don't know that we need to chase that rabbit exactly. But I think just on a personal level for your folks that are listening to this,

I do think honestly, I think that we resist the devil when he flees from us. I think that when we get saved, we are on a track to become more like Jesus.

And so theologically, we're being sanctified in a progressive way, like over the course of our lives, everything that we do, the

Lord is making us more like his son. And I think that he is faithful and just to finish the good work that he started.

And so he's not going to leave us in the lurch. The variable in all of that is human choice.

Are we going to submit to the Lord along the way? Are we willing to do our part to play and exercising things like spiritual disciplines in order to grow in that way?

But I just, I really believe that the Lord gives us more and more clarity, gives us more and more freedom from sin.

He breaks the enemy's strongholds. Jesus is victorious over the enemy.

The enemy's days are numbered and I can live in victory and assurance of that victory as a believer in Christ.

I just need Jesus who is the truth to help me to see the truth when I'm dealing with spiritual warfare.

And that's where the rubber meets the road here, right? Staying true and in the word and sensitive to the spirit and keeping a short list of sins, all of those things, as you become more godly, it pushes back against the kingdom of darkness.

And that's a beautiful thing. It is. Last question. Do you think we should be scared?

Let me be careful how I answer this because I don't want to give a cheap answer. I think that most

Christians, unfortunately, are oblivious to any of this. They just, they'd rather not think about it.

Or if they do think about it, they want to think about it in terms of just fantasy, like a horror movie that's not real.

That would be a mistake. That would definitely, because scripture is telling us the Christian life involves asking the

Lord to deliver us from the evil one in the Lord's prayer, putting on the full armor of God. When we take the gospel into dark places, we're going to get pushback.

I mean, we're storming the gates of hell with the message of light. So of course we're going to get pushback.

So I think it would be an error to just kind of turn a blind eye just because it makes us feel uncomfortable.

But I don't think that we need to be afraid because to go back to testing the spirits, greater is he that is in you than he is that is in the world.

And I just have so much confidence in my Jesus. Not to make that too churchy, but he's just that good.

He's won the day. He is victorious. He's going to vanquish all of his enemies.

He's in process of doing that now. If I'm submitting to the Lord and I'm walking in the

Spirit and I am getting rid of the sin in my life, to use a theological term, I'm putting to death my sin nature.

I'm uprooting the sin with the power of the Holy Spirit. I don't need to be afraid. Why? Because the worst thing that the enemy can do to me is death.

And for the Christian, death just brings me closer to Jesus. So all of this.

So that's my take on it. We're also told we've been talking about demonology.

I talked a little bit about angiology. The Lord has more powerful armies in his camp than the enemy does.

I mean, goodness gracious, you see in the book of Job that the accuser has to ask permission.

And so, you know, the Lord is sovereign and in control of all these things. So we don't need to be afraid, but we also don't need to take these things lightly.

Yeah. Yeah. When you said that last part of like, we have the angels, it made me think of that moment in those

Marvel movies where they're like, well, we have a Hulk, you know, like we have the better weapon, like we have God, God.

Like, we're good. And I think that is like a great place to end up like encouragement of like, you will be attacked, but you are protected.

And even if you die, you're going to heaven, like win, win, win, win, win. Like, it can't always be easy.

All right. You got to go through some struggles and you've got God on, you've got a Hulk on your side. But for those,

I mean, so much wisdom just came out of this one topic. And I feel like there were some nuggets within this episode of like the divine counsel theory and revelation.

Like I, you are more than welcome to come back. I'm going to hound you to get you back on my calendar after this, but how can people connect with you and some of your works if they want to continue to learn from you?

Yeah. So I've got a podcast with Dr. Gary Yates. I think it was on the show not too long ago.

So he and I are involved. Yeah. So he and I, he's a past senior pastor at a church where I'm an elder.

And so we, we put out this content answering Bible questions and it's called the Dive Living Word Press is the title of the sort of the site.

If you go to Google and search for that, Liberty Theological Seminary puts out some great content on YouTube.

Myself and other colleagues, I invite you guys to check us out. If you're interested in maybe a theological education, come and see us at Liberty and we'll have more conversations like this.

It's a lot of fun. So thanks a lot. Thank you so much. Thank you for your time. I'm so appreciative for the wisdom and I can't wait to have you back on the show.