Cassian's Recap: Should we be afraid of the unseen realm?

Hey, everybody, this is Cass, and welcome to my post-episode weekly recap. I'm coming to you live from my living room, and I just wanted to share some thoughts on this week's episode. I think the main question here is, should we be afraid of the unseen realm?

How active is this? Because here, as a curious and confused Christian, I want to know the answers, and I want to know the answers from educated people. So based on the last educated person, which was Dr. Josh Waltman, if you haven't listened to the episode, I'm going to recap it today, but these are just my thoughts.

If you want the truth, go watch the episode. So did he answer that question? Should we be afraid of the unseen realm? And based on his response, I don't think we should be. But there's a couple things that he talked about in the episode that I think are worth mentioning again, and something that truly and honestly shocked me.

To start things off, I have a couple notes here. This is just Josh's thoughts. When it comes to the demonic realm, there's no proof. So I think that that's something that we need to have in mind as we listen to these.

This is an absolute truth, because this is based off of his studies, based off the scripture that he's understood. But at the end of the day, what he says is an ultimate truth, and we should continue to seek further, rather than doubt him and write him off.

Let's just continue to say, wow, he's an informed man with a thought. It's worth consideration. But it's also, there's room for other thoughts to be brought in, and this is a topic I'm going to continue to talk about.

This isn't the final conversation, the one and only truth on demonology. We've already talked about this with Christopher Carr.

Anyways, let's get in.

Again, the caveat here is these are his thoughts. He came into this conversation with a lot of humility of like, based off what I know, this is what I think, but there could be other interpretations out there.

So love that. We love somebody that's humble. We also need to understand that angels have free will. If we want to understand where these demons came from, well, God created the heavens and the earth, and then he essentially had a bunch of angels that were his messengers, because that's what angels mean.

And what happened? How did we go from that to demons? Well, like us, God created them with free will. So they can also defect. They can also choose not to worship God. And from there, we get this account of Genesis 6, which has been discussed at length and will continue to be discussed at length that angels designed to honor God chose not to.

Okay.

They chose to come down to earth and do this despicable thing, which was to procreate and have sex with humans. And that's against the natural order. Those are beyond species. It's in my head. This is my interpretation here.

That's like bestiality because that's not their species, if we want to use that word. So they come down, they have sex with humans, and they create this offspring called the.

Nephilim.

Okay.

So right now you've got angels. Those angels defaulted.

They defected.

Sorry.

They created an offspring called the Nephilim. These Nephilims were half God, half human. And we see reports and accounts of these in Genesis 6. We also see reports and accounts of these in other religions.

This was something that blew my mind.

Blew.

My. Mind.

Nephilim exist. They're demigods at this point, half human, half God. And in the Christian culture, it's a bad thing. These are seen as despicable, outside of the natural order. And God did not like that because right after that, he flooded the world and started over.

God saw this and was like, wrong direction. Let's wipe the slate clean. What if we look at other religions?

Okay.

This wasn't happening in a vacuum, like a Christian vacuum, where this only impacted Christian world. These demigods existed for non-Christians. And how did those non-Christians see them?

Like gods.

I think that we all would too. They've got super human abilities, they've got supernatural origins. What were the Egyptians worshiping? What were the Greeks worshiping? Wouldn't we say like Hercules is demigod, half human, half Zeus?

I don't know. I don't know Greek origin mythology. What were the Romans worshiping? So we see these like hieroglyphics and like, if we're going to go down that rabbit hole, which like I love to do, I just leave it up to the experts to keep me within like realistic.

Balance.

But is it possible? And I'm not saying it's confirmed, but is it possible that, I don't know, the Egyptian god Ra is actually just a Nephilim? That in the Christian world, we'd be like, that's a demon.

We don't worship that. But in the Egyptian world, they're like, that's a demigod that has real power on earth. Of course, we're going to worship that. Regardless, I mean, like not regardless, that's something that's worth sitting on.

That like these other gods, the gods that other religions worship are real gods with real power because they came from supernatural origins of angels that doesn't make them holy or good. Your other religions, they come from power, but that does not mean it's good power.

That's why the God says, come to me. The only way through me is through my son. I am the Alpha and the Omega. I am everlasting. So these gods are real, are powerful, are not good, do not worship our God.

So as Christians, we can acknowledge that they have power. We can acknowledge that they exist, but it's still our God is over theirs because our God created them. So I think for a long time, it was like, well, there's so many religions.

How do we know Christianity is the real one? How do we know Christianity is the right one? How do we know your God's the right God? Like my Buddhist God could be better. My Hindu God could be better. And it's like, oh, yeah, no, your God's real.

Yeah, your Buddhist God is real. It's responding back to you, but it's not the heavenly father that made all creation and therefore it turned against that. And I would consider that in my Christian worldview as a demon, you don't consider that demon because you don't adhere to Christian values.

Anyways, something worth considering, at least no harm, no foul. But like if that's the way angels to demons, to gods, if that's the route, then that's something that's that explains it in my head. Anyways, what else did we talk about?

So to go back to the Nephilim, these Nephilim die. Obviously, we don't have giants on earth anymore. What happens? Hypothetically, according to Josh Boltman, and this is just a thought, it's not confirmed, but those are the demons on earth, the ghosts, we want to say that word of these Nephilim are the demons on earth that are haunting us.

Now, this is different than the fallen angels that turned against God because those procreated with humans and then they created Nephilim and those Nephilim died, and now the ghosts and spirits of those are the demons.

The angels that came down and turned against God originally, those are in the abyss, those, according to scripture, have already received their judgment and they are locked in the abyss. They are already in hell.

They received their judgment. Um, so we see these different levels of demons. We see that, like, it's not just like God versus Satan and like God and angels versus.

Satan.

And like, when you feel like your friend's possessed, that's Satan. When you feel like you're being tempted by the devil, it's just Satan. No, there's like more. There's so many more. There's like legions of them.

And it always makes me think of the screw tape letters when it's like, Oh, this is how you get humans to turn against their God. Like it's a phenomenal CS Lewis book. It's actually free on Spotify. If you Spotify premium, that's how I listen to it.

But I used to think it was like Satan himself tempting me all the time. But, and like, maybe it is, I'm not saying it isn't, who knows? Again, this is like thoughts that are based and founded in scripture and research, but it actually could be like more than one.

So like in this unseen realm, there is a lot of players that are against the godly team, like legions.

Okay.

So you've got like tons and tons of people out there. So when we say it's a spiritual war, we mean thousands of soldiers on the battlefield against each other. I asked him like, how, how is it even possible that people had like paganistic polytheistic, they believe in a God that isn't our God.

Like, how did that even happen? If like God created the world, God was present and people at some point were like, no, I'm going to turn against you and believe in Baal, I'm going to turn against you and have a golden calf.

Like, wasn't God there the whole time? Like, how did they even have a chance to turn against him as humans? And I think that Dr. Waltman does a really good job of like breaking down, like, well, we live in a fallen world.

And when it comes to spiritual warfare, there are three elements at play that work together to turn us against God.

Okay.

Satan is very resourceful and creative. We can give him that. And not to like put him on a pedestal, but we need to acknowledge what he is capable of so we know what we're working with and what we're working up against.

Okay.

When we put on that armor of God, where are our weak points that we need to be protecting the most? And he said, there's the flesh, our innate desires to sin against God. You know, our desires of lust and of jealousy to covet, to steal.

There's the world. That's the second one. And that's just like the template of which all of this takes place. The group social norms of out beating one another, of having power over another nation. And then there's the enemy himself who kind of pokes and pulls and uses all this against us.

So all of those things work together to create the spiritual warfare against us. And this was like, this was the bomb for me. As we talk about this, like it's happening in the past, that all of these things, these pagan religions, these things against the world that, you know, Satan used to turn people against God and believe in Baal and believe in these paganistic religions and believe in many gods.

Yeah. That happened in the past, right? No, because right now I have many gods. I love, I love Jesus. I gave my life to Jesus, but I also worship a few other gods and that's called comfort. That's one of them.

I sacrifice my time to, to that God. Um, there is beauty, sacrifice a lot of my money to beauty. They're not blood sacrifices, but they're still sacrifices. We still live in a paganistic world, but those pagan gods look a little different.

They look like adoration online and body images and money and comfort and instant gratification and laziness. Those aren't, those aren't God. None of those are God, but we still worship them and sacrifice to them.

So that, that was a not good feeling for me, but we got to know about it. We need to, we need to atone for the sins that we didn't know we were committing is what I'm reading a lot in Leviticus. And these are the sins I didn't know I was committing is not worshiping God.

I thought I was worshiping God by going to church and having a Bible podcast, but Hey, I spent a lot of my time on not God, a lot of my money on not God. Um, and the last point that I just want to close up in as he talks about like being demonized.

So like, again, like how is this affecting us today? There's a difference. There is oppression and there's possession. Oppression is the temptations, the jealousy, the lust, the gluttony, and then there's possessions, which is where we lose, we lose control over our physical agency.

While as Christians, we think we can't be possessed because we're filled with the Holy spirit. Uh, there's definitely factors at play. We're definitely tempted. Again, Satan is resourceful and it's very complicated.

So while like Satan can't come into my Holy body because I'm embodied, I'm. Hopefully I think I am. I'm inhibited by the Holy spirit. I hate to speak in absolutes. Cause like it's up to God, not me. I'm inhibited by the Holy spirit.

Okay.

Satan absolutely can come and demonize me with temptation, but he can't kick out the Holy spirit. And that's why it is important to have the Holy spirit within us because that possession can lose our agency, our control over our decisions.

Um, this is also a very complicated discussion because it works in part with who we are as people. Are we people that are eating a lot? I would not say that somebody that is very gluttonous and morbidly obese is possessed by the devil and being possessed by this temptation of food and being gluttonous.

I would say that that person has a health issue that the devil is exploiting. You know, when you're depressed and anxious, I would not say you're possessed by the devil, but I do think that the devil is using it against you to make it worse, to making you.

Less turning towards God, less willing to go to the doctor. Like by no means am I excluding any medical expertise by saying you're like, Oh, you're depressed. You must be possessed or oppressed by the devil.

No, you should go to the doctor.

You should probably eat healthy. You should absolutely change your lifestyle to make baseline healthy decisions. So there's less room for the devil to exploit. Um, that's my point. So should we be scared of the unseen realm?

No, if you're a child, God, absolutely not. I think that that question has been answered. Even if the unseen realm kills me and I lose my life on this earth, I know where I'm going. I know who I'm seeing next.

I'd love to see my creator. So yeah, like I love my family. I love my job. I love my life. I have the best life ever. But if it ended and I got to see my creator, that would be wonderful. So I'm not really afraid of the unseen realm.

And as a child of God, I don't think you should be either because you're either here with your loved ones or you're there with your creator, your loving creator, um, yeah, 20 out of 10 episode. I wonder what you guys think.

Um, and I hope you guys enjoy listening. Have a great and blessed day.

Bye.