Demonology

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On Sunday mornings, I have precious little space to put all of my notes, and since the advent of this new teaching desk, I now have all the room in the world, and I almost feel as if I'm in a danger.
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I bring too much with me, because I can now bring it all and lay it all out.
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So pardon me for just a moment as I lay out everything that I've brought with me tonight.
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I just kept printing out more things.
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We are drawing to a close in our study of angels.
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You should have in front of you a handout.
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Ms.
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Pat put them out for everyone, so everyone should have one sitting in front of you, and you'll notice on your handout that it tells you that in our study of angels, which is called angelology, and that is the name.
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I didn't just make that up.
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In our study of angels, we have looked at the elect angels, which would be those angels that the Bible describes did not depart from their place of exaltation, but not like the ones who fell, and that's why we say we have the fallen angels.
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And over the last several weeks, we've looked at he who is the most prominent of the fallen angels, Satan himself.
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Well, tonight we're going to look at the other fallen angels, the demons.
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R.C.
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Sproul, in his lecture on angels and demons, recounted a story from his past where he talked about his professor when he was in Amsterdam studying abroad.
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He had a professor, Dr.
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Burkauer, and Dr.
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Burkauer was teaching, and in one of his lectures he said, There can be no theology without demonology.
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There can be no theology, and by that he meant Christian theology.
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He said there can be no Christian theology without demonology.
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Now the reason Dr.
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Burkauer said that was that he was responding to a theologian who at the time was putting forward the idea that the goal of Bible study was to remove all of the mythological elements.
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The goal of Bible study is to remove the myth and get down to, I guess you could say, the brass tacks, the real deal, the fundamentals, and this person who Dr.
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Burkauer was describing, who I believe was Rudolf Bultmann, but I could be wrong about that, but the person he was describing was basically saying that we need to get rid of all the mythology in Scripture, and the first thing that's got to go is this stuff about angels and demons, particularly demons, and so Dr.
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Burkauer's response is you can't have theology without demonology, because the Bible is so clear about the existence and the attributes and the activity of demons.
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People have various ways that they think about the subject of demons.
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A lot of times when you mention the subject of demons, the very first thing that comes to people's minds are the movies.
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We think about movies that have sought to give an idea of what demon possession might be like, where people have been contorted in their bodies and their heads spin around and they projectile all kinds of things and they use foul language.
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You know the movie I'm talking about.
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I've never seen it, but I've heard about it.
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I'm not a scary movie guy.
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I don't like those types of movies, but you understand that's what most people think about when you talk about demons.
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Or they have some kind of idea, like the Roman Catholic view, where you have to expel the demons, and so they would have a certain ritual where there would be words that were presented that were meant to expel the demons.
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And so when people think about demons, oftentimes if you bring up the subject of demons, it's in line with the idea of possession, demon possession.
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A person has a demon.
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And of course there is biblical precedence for that.
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The Roman Catholic Church didn't invent the notion of demon possession.
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The Bible obviously teaches the idea of demon possession.
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Throughout the ministry of Christ specifically, we see people who were affected by demons.
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In fact, just to bring out one in particular piece of information, as I was studying and I was preparing, I looked up on my computer program, which allows me to study various texts of Scripture at the same time, various translations rather, and I noted this.
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I looked up the word demon in the ESV.
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In the ESV, the word demon comes up in 62 passages of Scripture.
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In the King James Version, there is not one time where you have the word demon.
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Did you know that? In the King James Bible, the word demon is not used.
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It's the plural devils.
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You'll see the word devils, but the word demon is not used in the King James Bible.
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I thought that was interesting.
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I didn't realize it until I went to look for it.
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Didn't find it, so I googled and I said, is demon used? No, it's used in the New King James, which I know Brother Andy uses, but it's not in the older King James.
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Simply uses the word devils.
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And that's interesting because they are two different words.
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Now, when I say this, I'm talking about Greek.
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In Hebrew, it's a little different, but in the Greek language, there is diabolos, where we get the word diabolical.
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That's the word for devil.
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But in the Greek, the word for demon is daimon.
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D-A-I-M-O-N would be the English equivalent of the Greek letters.
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And daimon is a word which means, in the Greek, it was simply another word for like a demigod or a lesser god or some kind of a god, but it was used scripturally as an evil spirit.
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And so we have the word demon that is used in the ESV and always referencing an evil spirit.
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In fact, there's only three times I could find that it was used in the Old Testament.
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It's almost always used in the New Testament.
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In fact, the three places...
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I'll read them to you real quick because I thought these were interesting.
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The three places we see the word demon in the ESV in the Old Testament is Leviticus 17, 7.
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So they shall no more sacrifice their sacrifices to goat demons after whom they whore.
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This shall be a statute forever to them throughout their generations.
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So it was a command in Leviticus not to sacrifice to goat demons.
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Interesting use of language.
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Deuteronomy 32, they sacrificed to demons that were not gods, to gods they had never known, to new gods that had come recently whom your fathers have never dreaded.
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And then in Psalm 106, 37, they sacrificed their sons and their daughters to demons.
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Christianity does not believe in human sacrifice.
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You guys know that, right? You say, well, what about Jesus? Jesus laid down his life for his people.
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That's not the same as taking and offering up a child to a false god.
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And that was happening in the Old Covenant.
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That happened in the midst of the people of Israel.
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And the people were not offering up their children to a true god.
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They were offering up their children to a false god.
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And those false gods were often demonic in nature.
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In the 8th chapter of the book of 1 Corinthians, Paul talks about the fact that false gods don't exist.
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But then he clarifies that by saying, but demons do exist.
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And what he meant by that is this.
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People set up idols and worship false gods.
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And a lot of times it's just imagination.
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They've created some kind of a stone or wooden idol, and they've given that wooden idol authority in their life.
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And that's something that they have made up in their minds.
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I tell people the greatest idol factory in the world, as John Calvin said, is in the mind.
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People make their own idols.
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But there is a reality where there can be a demonic influence behind that idol.
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And Paul says, whenever they're worshipping at these temples, they're worshipping not just false gods, they're worshipping demons.
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Isn't that a real scary thought? That a lot of these people who you see going into these houses of worship are not just going into the houses of worship and experiencing the participation in a mass delusion, but they are participating in a mass demonic ceremony.
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Even if they don't know they're doing so.
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Think about the Mormons for a moment.
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You say, oh, but the Mormons are such nice people.
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They wear such nice clothes, and their boys are always so kind when they come to my front door, and they have their nice tin speeds, and their nice little ties, and their shirts, and their little tag that says Elder so-and-so.
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Yes, but what is the teaching of Mormonism? It's polytheism.
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It is a false view of God, death, the afterlife, Jesus.
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And yet, they always talk about experiences and power, and their ability to have this close connection spiritually.
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Somehow, what are they connecting with? Could it be that they are connecting on a demonic level? You say, boy, you're being really harsh to the Mormons.
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I could do it to the Jehovah Witnesses too.
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Maybe how about the Muslims? Is it that Allah is a false god, or is Allah a demon? I know this isn't popular, and maybe we'll get cut off of Facebook.
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They don't like what I'm saying.
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But I think there is some kind of power that would cause people to fly a plane into a building, or strap a vest full of C4 to their body and walk into a crowded room.
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There's something more than just a man's ability to imagine.
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There are demons out there, and demons exist.
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How they influence people, where they influence people, we don't know.
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But the Bible says, in this Old Testament Scripture that I just quoted, that when they were offering their children as sacrifices, they were sacrificing them to demons.
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What a reality.
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People always say, I'm spiritual.
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Well, demons are spiritual.
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Be more specific.
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People say that all the time.
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I'm spiritual, I'm not religious.
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So, there are demons.
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They're spiritual.
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What does that mean? So, as I said, I'm just giving an introduction tonight, because I think the subject of demons is one that many people are confused about.
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Many people misunderstand and misapply.
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And I just want to go through some passages with you.
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I want to take you through our outline.
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I do plan to spend tonight and next week on this subject, and then we're going to take our break.
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And I need it.
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I need a break.
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We come back in September, we'll move on to anthropology.
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So, we'll get out of angelology and move on to biblical study of man and his nature.
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But for tonight and next week, we're going to do demonology.
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For our first passage, if you want to open your Bible, I'd like to invite you to Ephesians chapter 6.
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Now, if you're in our Sovereign Grace Academy course, you're going to be doing this tomorrow night.
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We're going to be looking at Ephesians 6, 11 and following.
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But tonight, we're just going to look at verses 11 and 12.
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Ephesians chapter 6, beginning at verse 11, begins the section that most people are familiar with as the armor of God passage.
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Now again, tomorrow, if you're in our Sovereign Grace Academy, we're going to look at the armor of God.
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We're going to apply that passage to how it applies to living the Christian life and what those things mean.
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But tonight, I just want to look at verses 11 and 12.
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Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil.
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For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces in the heavenly places.
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Notice what it's saying.
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First, it tells us to put on the whole armor of God, that's verse 11.
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And in verses 13 and following, it tells us what that armor is.
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It talks about a breastplate of righteousness, a belt of truth, shoes that are shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace.
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It talks about a shield of faith, a helmet of salvation, and a sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God.
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Those are the things that we need to fight the battles.
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But in verse 12, it tells us what the battles are.
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It tells us that the battles are not really physical battles.
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Most of us get really caught up in the physical part that is often being influenced by the spiritual, and we don't even realize it.
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Remember last week, what we talked about? I said that it's not that we have a battle against the world, the flesh, and the devil, but we are in the flesh, and the flesh is in the world, and the world is influenced by the devil.
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And so, these are how these make inroads to us.
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And so, when we discuss the subject of the battle, the battle is a spiritual battle.
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Now, let me ask you a question.
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Is lying a physical battle or a spiritual battle? Well, it starts in the physical.
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I'm not disagreeing, but I'm saying it starts in the physical because there's something that's making us want to lie, whether it is somebody asks us a question we don't want to answer, or maybe somebody is pushing us into a corner and we don't want to be honest, or maybe we don't want to hurt someone's feelings, or we don't want to start a fight, or maybe we just want to lie.
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All right? So that starts in the physical, but it's from a spiritual place.
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There's something that's making us want to lie, something that's making people want to lust, something that's making people want to get angry.
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And we just go down through the list, right? And you say, well, is that demons, Pastor? Well, no.
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The first place that all sin comes from is within our wicked heart.
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But demons in their existence are encouraging that wicked heart through the world and through the flesh.
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And so what our heart wants, the demons are more than willing to give.
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They would be more than happy for us to live miserable lives because they are miserable.
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And they say misery loves company.
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Well, in this case, misery is desiring to destroy because they will be destroyed.
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Notice it says we do not wrestle against flesh and blood but against the rulers.
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How many of your Bibles say principalities? Does anybody say principalities? New King James says principalities.
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That's an interesting word.
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It's simply in the Greek.
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It's archaic.
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It's the ones who are the high authority, right? It says we don't wrestle against flesh and blood but we wrestle against the rulers.
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That's what the ESV says.
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The principalities, the authorities, those who are in power.
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And you say, well, who are those who are in power? Well, in this sense, it goes on to say against the cosmic powers over this present darkness against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.
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This is absolutely referring to a spiritual conflict.
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This cannot be simply talking about the conflict that we have with the powers that be in this world.
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Are there powers that be in this world that are in conflict? Yes.
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Do we have problems with them? Yes.
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But are they the focus? See, this isn't talking about the issues you might have with Donald Trump.
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Nobody? Really? Okay.
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Maybe the issues you have with Barack Obama? Maybe.
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Let's go back a few years.
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These aren't talking about the issues that you have with your state, local authorities.
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This is referring to those authorities on a higher plane of existence.
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We don't see this.
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We don't really get to experience it, but we see the effect of it.
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Let me ask you this, and be honest.
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Is there anything less than demonic influence that would cause people to want to bring their children into a library where a man is dressed as a woman and he's reading to them, and then have their children lay on that person and caress them? No, there's photographs.
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And then come to find out that this person, one of them at least, was arrested for pedophilia.
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The fact that pedophilia exists, and now is not even being considered anymore as a deviation, but rather an orientation.
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Again, I'm not trying to get too political here, but do you not see the hand of the powers and principalities and the cosmic forces of evil? That's what this passage is saying.
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There are cosmic evils.
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And I know that sounds rather maybe aggressively conspiratorial.
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People say, Pastor, are you a conspiracy theorist? No.
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Because typically conspiracy theory wants to lead back to some man who has his finger on the button and has all authority and all power.
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And that's not me.
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I believe that there is a conspiracy, but it's not that it is a man or a group of men or whatever.
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I think the conspiracy is spiritual, and it uses all kinds of men.
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And I think there are men who do things in conjunction with other men never knew, but yet they are being used by the devil and his angels.
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And they're being used willingly.
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They're willingly ready and able to be used, even if they don't know so, because they get the power and authority that goes along with that.
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So, again, if somebody says, well, do you think it's the...
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And I don't know anything about conspiracies.
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Do you think it's the Rockefellers or the whatever? I don't know.
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I know this.
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I know Satan and his angels are working in this world, and they are my greatest enemy.
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This text tells me I am to put on the full armor of God because my greatest battle is not against flesh and blood.
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Because the armor of God is not about a flesh and blood battle.
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It's about a spiritual battle.
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And the spiritual battle is against those spiritual influences that are going to be the things that I really have to battle.
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Because while I can put walls up that will protect me from men, my walls don't protect me from the spiritual influences.
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Now, I might put a thing on my computer that keeps out certain things.
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I might put up a wall that keeps out certain things.
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I might try to blind my eyes to certain things, but the reality is the devil has a very keen way to make it past all my defenses.
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And he's had many thousands of years to get really good at it.
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And so this is the battle we are in.
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We are in a battle not of flesh and blood, but a spiritual battle against cosmic powers, against spiritual forces in the heavenly places.
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And by the way, I think that term, heavenly places, I'm going to talk about heaven Sunday.
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Praise the Lord I get to preach on heaven.
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I really mean that.
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I sat preparing that message and my eyes teared up just thinking about heaven.
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But when it talks about the heavenly places, it's talking about those places we can't see.
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There are actually three ways the word heaven is used in Scripture.
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It talks about the air around us.
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That's one type of heaven where the clouds are.
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And then it talks about the atmosphere above that where the stars, sun, moon, and all those, basically space.
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That's a second type of heaven.
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But then there's a third heaven which is what we would call the abode of God, but it's also that realm that we can't see.
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I'm going to talk Sunday.
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There was a cosmonaut who went up into space when he came back.
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They said, did you see God? No.
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Well, you're not going to see God.
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He's not just sitting behind Uranus somewhere or sitting on one of Saturn's rings or sitting on one of the moons of Jupiter.
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You're not going to see God because you went a little higher than the rest of us.
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God is on a different plane of existence.
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And so too is the demonic and the angelic realm.
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It's not just something that's a little higher than us.
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It's on a different plane of existence than we are.
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And what's funny is science, I don't want to go too far right on this.
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Scientists are always trying to find this.
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They're always talking now about the study of multiverses and the idea of other dimensions, fourth dimension and things.
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They're always trying to seek these things out as if they believe they're true and then you say, well, I believe in God.
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Well, you're nuts.
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So you believe in a multiverse universe where there's thousands of Keiths and every one of them is different because they were all, you know, timeline split and all these different things.
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But you don't believe in God? You don't believe in angels and demons? No, that's too far out.
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That's too weird.
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Anyway, the point of it is this tells us that this one two verse passage tells us that there is an entire war going on with an entire army.
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And the army is that of the spiritual realm.
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Those who are for us, we would call our gods elect angels called ministering spirits.
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And those who are against us are the devil and his angels.
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And they are referenced, I believe, as those who are the cosmic powers and the spiritual forces.
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Well, now let's look at our handout.
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I don't want to leave you with all those blanks.
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So we'll begin looking at that.
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Look first at the existence of demons.
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Letter A would be their creation.
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The creation of demons.
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The Bible does not tell us that demons were created at a different time than angels, which would lead me to believe that angels were all created.
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In fact, I do believe this.
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I believe all angels were created at the same time.
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And the Bible does talk about the fact that they were God spoke and they were created.
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So the creation of demons.
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And the reason I'm making this point, it isn't as if God created good angels and bad angels.
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I believe God created the angelic realm.
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And when God created the angelic realm, which we see in Scripture, we later at some point, and we don't know when, but at some point there was a fall.
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Now we've already talked about this with Satan, so I don't really have to go over all that again.
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But the Bible says when Satan fell, that he wasn't the only one who fell.
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Now there's no passage that says Satan fell and then the angels fell.
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But there are passages we can look to to pull that information together.
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In fact, that's the next blank.
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First we see their creation.
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You can put a question mark after that.
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It doesn't say they were created except that they were angels.
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Their fall is what really matters.
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And their fall is evidenced in the first verse, I would say, is Matthew 25 and 41.
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I've already mentioned it a few times tonight.
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In Matthew 25, Jesus is talking about heaven and hell.
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In fact, this is the verse I preached last Sunday.
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He says that at the end of the world, the nations are going to be brought before Him, and the righteous are going to be on His right side.
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Those are His sheep.
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And the goats are going to be on the left side.
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Those are going to go away into eternal punishment, which was, what does the text say? That was created for the devil and his angels.
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Very clear language there.
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Even though it doesn't tell us how many there were, it doesn't tell us when they fell, it tells us a very key piece of information.
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They are the devil's angels.
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They are his angels.
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There's that possessive pronoun.
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His angels.
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And so you say, well, what does that mean, Pastor? Well, that means that these angels have followed after Satan in his rebellion.
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Now, again, I can't take you to a particular verse that says that, but we know, here's the things that we do know and why we're extrapolating the data and putting it all together.
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We know demons exist because the Bible talks about them, uses them.
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I already mentioned all the verses.
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We know that demons are in the angelic realm.
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We looked at Ephesians.
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We know that the devil exists and how he exists and his fall.
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We talked about that the last few weeks.
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So what do we know about demons? They are his angels, which would mean, and again, taking this simply by the process of deductive reasoning, if they're his angels, that either means he created them or he took them with him when he fell.
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Now, he doesn't have the power to create from what I see in Scripture.
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Therefore, my deduction is that he took them with him when he fell.
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He is called, in Matthew 12, 24, the devil is called the prince of the demons, meaning he has exercised a type of authority over them.
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He has exercised some type of leadership.
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They consider him to be their leader.
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Now, you've got to think about it.
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These angels see God.
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They're in the presence of God.
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They know God exists, and yet they see Satan and they want to follow after Satan.
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I can't imagine.
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But then again, I can't imagine being in a perfect garden with perfect nourishment, with everything I've ever needed, with a perfect mate, and having the desire to disobey my Creator.
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And yet, that happened too.
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People say, I don't understand how the angels fell.
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Can you understand how man fell? If you look in your own wicked heart, you might come to a better understanding, but the angels who fell would be called demons.
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They are described throughout the Scripture, and we see them, most primarily, we see them during the ministry of Jesus.
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I want to just point this out, and you probably already know this, but it still goes important to say, we don't see as much demonic activity in the Old Testament, at least by name, and we don't see as much demonic activity in the book of Acts, or in the writings of Paul, or the rest of the epistles in the New Testament.
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But it seems like on every other page of the Gospels, there's demonic activity.
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You ever notice that? You ever wonder why that is? I mean, maybe I'm the only one.
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I really do.
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I had to think through this.
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Why is it that there are really not...
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I mentioned the three passages that the ESV references in the Old Testament about demons, and I've actually printed every passage that uses the word demons.
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I've got them all printed right here, and only a few of them go beyond the Gospels.
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Most of them are in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
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Why? Could it be, and again, I'm only putting this out as a hypothesis, could it be that the introduction of the Son of God into the world caused such a stir in the angelic realm and in the demonic realm that there was a higher instance of demonic activity in and around the Son of God during His ministry than was ever before or would ever come after? I think it's definitely a possibility.
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Again, I can't prove it.
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I'm only going off of data that I'm extrapolating ideas.
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But my thought is this.
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People talk today a lot about demonic possession, why we don't see it in the same way that we saw it.
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Like I said, with Jesus, everywhere He went, there were demon-possessed people.
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Every city, there were demon-possessed people.
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And people ask me, do I think I've ever met anybody that's demon-possessed? I've met some people who I think qualify.
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I say that a little joking, but I've met some people that I think could certainly fit the bill.
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But in the Bible, it was so clear.
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I mean, the people, they knew this was a demoniac, and that was the term, a person who was possessed by a demon.
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And so it's just interesting that it's all throughout the Bible, but it's very particular during the life of Christ.
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I want to mention another verse.
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I went past this.
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I want to go real quick back.
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Revelation 12, 4 is seen by many people as the passage that describes Satan taking the angels with him.
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Revelation 12, 4, remember we talked a minute ago about Satan falling and taking his angels? Well, Revelation 12, 4 says, in referring to the dragon who we know as Satan, Revelation tells us that the dragon is a reference to Satan.
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It says, his tail swept down a third of the stars of heaven and cast them to the earth.
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And the dragon stood before the woman who was about to give birth, so that when she bore her child, he might devour it.
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So, a lot of theologians and scholars have seen that passage in Revelation and said, okay, the dragon, who is the devil, takes his tail and he sweeps a third of the stars down? Okay, we know that isn't a literal thing.
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Remember, you don't have to interpret Revelation with crass literalism.
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You read according to the symbology that's there.
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And so, what are the symbols that are used in Revelation? Well, the dragon is the symbol for the devil.
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He's the one who's swinging his tail.
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And the stars in Revelation are often a reference to angels.
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And so, there's how we make that connection.
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And so, and again, if you're learning to interpret symbols, you look for places where the symbols are described for their meaning.
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So, if the devil is the one sweeping his tail and the stars are the angels, if he sweeps his tail and brings a third of the angels down to the earth, that's a picture, or could be a picture, of the fall of the demons, the fallen angels.
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Now, again, if somebody came along with a better understanding, I would be willing to listen.
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But I think that is a reasonable way to understand that passage.
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And now, it leads to the question, though, how many angels are there? The Old Testament talks about the heavenly host, you know, and Jesus said, I could call down a legion, you know, of angels if necessary.
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The angelic realm is copious.
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So, if Satan has a third of what God originally created, and by the way, we don't believe, I don't believe, angels procreate.
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You know what that means, right? Human beings, there was only two when they were created, and they were created to fill the earth through the process of procreation, right? Angels, the Bible says they are not married, neither are they given in marriage.
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So, that would lead me to believe that angels do not procreate.
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Therefore, when God created the angels, he created them all at the same time.
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Therefore, whatever the number was, however big the number was, it was all done.
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And so, Satan taking away a third was a third of a very large number.
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Thousands upon thousands upon thousands.
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And so, I said in our last class, I don't think Satan has ever tried to afflict me, because Satan is not an infinite being, and he's got bigger fish to fry than some little guy in a little church in a little town in Jacksonville.
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But I do think that there are enough demons in the world to affect us.
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But I don't know that it's the same as it was when Christ was on the earth.
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Which is why I don't think we see as many, quote-unquote, possessions, as we did during the life of Christ.
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I'm not saying people don't get demon possessed today, I believe they do.
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But I do think there's a difference in the amount.
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I know very few people, like I said, that I've ever even considered that it might be a demon.
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But I will say this, adding to that, I think that there are times when people have missed demonic influence or possession, and applied it to something else, like a medical condition.
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Did you know the Bible makes a very clear distinction between demonic possession and medical problems? In fact, you go through these texts, many of these texts will make a big distinction between somebody who's sick and somebody who's demon possessed.
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See, oftentimes people say, well, anybody with a mental problem is demon possessed.
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Not necessarily.
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Not necessarily.
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But I do think, and again, this has got to be dangerous because of me thinking now, but I do think there are times when people do have demonic activity and they blamed it on some type of mental disorder.
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You know, a lot of these things that they find that are quote-unquote mental disorders have no real way to measure them medically.
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They simply say, well, they're behaving X, Y, and Z, and therefore it must be this.
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But the Bible makes a distinction even between epilepsy and demon possession.
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And they knew the difference.
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How did they know the difference? I don't know.
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But they did make a distinction between someone who was demon possessed and someone who was sick with a physical ailment.
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Now, that leads to another question.
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Again, we can go a thousand questions.
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Somebody said, well, can demons manifest in a physical ailment? There are times where the Scripture seems to indicate that that is so.
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But ultimately, though, there is a distinction that is to be made.
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Therefore, if somebody gets Alzheimer's, we don't automatically say, well, that person's got a demon.
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Or if somebody has epilepsy and is starting to foam at the mouth or have a seizure, you know, in some cultures they don't know what the medical thing is, so they say, oh, well, that's a demon, or that's some kind of, they've got to be prayed away.
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This is how shamans operate in some of the third world, is that they'll come in and they'll offer some type of a chant or some type of an exorcism over somebody who is sick.
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There's even old magic tricks that they would use where they would bring in the gizzards of a chicken hidden in their hand, and they'll say a person's sick, and they'll reach up and pretend to pull those things out, and they're pulling out the bad, sick parts, or they're pulling out the demons or whatever, and they'll throw them into a can and say, that was the tumor, or that was the whatever.
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And again, so, is it spiritual, is it physical? I think there's a real question to be asked there.
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So let's say somebody comes to me.
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My daughter is screaming out, and she's having a fit, and she's cussing, and she's hating me, and I think she has a demon.
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I've had people ask me, Pastor, do you think that she's demon-possessed? I don't know.
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And I don't know, really, if I would be able to know.
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I don't know, brother, I don't want to put you on the spot.
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You ever had somebody come and ask you that question? Yeah.
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And it's hard, isn't it? It's not an easy thing.
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And again, people get influenced by movies and television and what they think the Bible teaches, and so they have all these things, and they, all you got to do is say, in the name of Jesus, depart! Well, there was a guy in the book of Acts who tried something against a demon.
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It didn't work.
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Remember? It says, Jesus I know, and Paul I've heard of, but I don't know you.
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And a guy took a whooping over it.
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Remember? Remember? I'm giving the Keith Standard version, but you know what I'm talking about, right? The point is, demon possession, I think it does happen today.
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I think that the time of Christ, though, is absolutely unique in history.
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I'm not saying it can't happen today.
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I do think it does.
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But I think that our ability to recognize it and call it by name is a little bit more difficult now because we don't have Christ standing in our midst who is able to say, come out.
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And, yes, you want to? Sure.
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So I think I would always defer on the spiritual cause and then, you know, unless the person is dying or something.
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Sure, yeah.
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Well, and there's always a reason to pray, right? Even if it is a physical ailment, there's always a reason to go to God and pray for this person.
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If we don't know what it is.
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But I'm thinking of people that their child may be suffering from Tourette's or something, and yet they're so convinced that it's a demon, and so they mistreat their child or they put their child in stocks or something outlandish, beat them, calling upon the devil to come out.
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That's the kind of thing that I think is scary for me, is a misunderstanding or misuse.
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Even if a person did have a demon, you know, how do we deal with that? The Bible says through prayer, you know, and there's a question about fasting.
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There's a part where Jesus talks about this kind of demon can only be dealt with with fasting and prayer.
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But, again, what's the common link? Prayer.
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You know, I don't think that I'm called to expel the demon through some kind of a chant.
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I really don't.
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I'm too afraid to think that I have that ability.
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Some people think they do.
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Some people think that they're demon exorcists.
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But I certainly don't.
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So there was a priest, and I just read the article the other day, there was some city in South America, there was a bishop, and he felt the whole city was demon-possessed, so he was sprinkling holy water from a helicopter over the whole city.
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That was his solution.
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Well, that's an interesting one.
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Again, you know, referring to the issue of how do we deal with demons, first and foremost, we put on the whole armor of God, going back to our original passage.
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We go back to the Ephesians 6 passage.
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How do we fight the spiritual battle? First of all, we put on the whole armor of God ourselves.
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And we know that we're able to fight because we're fighting in the power of God, not ourselves.
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If we have a person that we think is dealing with a demon, then we go to God on their behalf.
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We go to God with their family.
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We go to God with that person, even if the person's cussing us or yelling or screaming or having some other kind of violent contortion or compulsion.
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We go to God for them because only God truly has the power to do anything about it.
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You know, when the disciples were given the power to cast out demons, it was still the power of God.
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When anyone was able to do anything against any spiritual power, it was always through the power of God.
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How did Jesus deal with the power of Satan when he was in his midst? The word of God.
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It's always going to be the power of God that fights the battle.
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And so that's really what I wanted to sort of draw out tonight, and again from that Ephesians passage, is where do demons show up? Everywhere.
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They're in authority.
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They're in power.
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They're influencing every aspect that we have to deal with.
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They're part of the conspiracies that everybody's always concerned about.
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They're out there.
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How do we battle them? Spiritually, on our knees.
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The greatest power you have is not the power of self, but the power of God.
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The greatest tool you have in the battle is the power of prayer and the word of God.
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You don't really have anything else.
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You realize in the whole listing of the armor, there is only one offensive tool, and it's Scripture.
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The sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.
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Everything else is meant to protect you.
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The breastplate of righteousness.
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Why the breastplate of righteousness? This is important, because we're going to talk about this more tomorrow night.
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The heart sits behind the breastplate.
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And so if our hearts are outside of God's will, if our hearts are being led away or led astray, if our hearts are not right with God, if we're not behind the breastplate of Christ's righteousness, we're exposed to the devil.
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If we are not behind the shield of faith, and if we are not helmeted with our salvation, why is the helmet salvation? Because that's where our mind is, and the number one place that the devil and his demons will attack you is whether or not you know that you know the Lord.
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Helmet of salvation.
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Do you know the Lord? What's the number one way Christians are attacked? I get it all the time.
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Pastor, I just don't know if I'm saved.
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What's the weakest Christian in the world? The person who doesn't know he really knows the Lord.
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And he's always going to be ineffectual.
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He's always going to be oppressed.
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And he's never going to be effective.
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Again, I'm getting into tomorrow night's lesson, but you understand why this is important.
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The battle that we fight begins on our knees.
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Putting on the armor starts with prayer.
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Next week we're going to look at the nature of demons.
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We're going to finish up by looking at their activity a little more closely and look at a few more passages.
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I want to encourage you to read the story.
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It's not a story, it's a narrative.
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Read the narrative of the man with the legion of demons.
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This will be your homework.
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I don't normally give homework on Wednesday nights, but there's actually three texts, Matthew, Mark, and Luke.
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I'm going to give them to you now, and I'm going to start with this next week.
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Matthew 8, 28-34.
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You'll notice Matthew mentions two men with demons, and I'm going to talk next week about why he mentions two, because the other ones only mention one.
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Mark 5, 1-13, and Luke 8, 26-39.
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This is probably the best representation we have of somebody who's actually possessed by a myriad, a legion of demons.
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We're going to look at this text when we start next week and then move on.
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Yes, sir? Luke 8, 26-39.
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Luke has the longest narrative.
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Matthew has the one that tells us that there are two, but I want you to compare all three, and when we come back next week we'll look at them together.
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Sound good? Let's end with prayer.
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Father, we thank You for this time to study.
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I pray that this has been helpful.
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I pray that it's been useful.
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I pray most of all, Lord, that we'll understand that, yes, demons exist.
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Yes, they hate us.
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They hate You, and they hate Your Word, and our greatest ability to deal with them is to begin by going to You and seeking Your power and not our own.
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And it's in Christ's name we pray.
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Amen.