What does the Bible say about demons? What are demons according to the Bible? - Podcast Episode 114

Welcome to the GotQuestions podcast, continuing our series and this overall discussion of what does the Bible say about angels and demons. And today we're going to be jumping into the.

Demons side of that question. Very, very common questions. We receive questions that run the.

Whole gamut of topics and from people who are just very curious to people who are terrified, to people who have very unbiblical views, to other people who are really just trying to figure out what actually does the Bible say, because there's so much out there in pop culture, so many, even other religions have influenced our beliefs about demons and so forth.

So today we're going to take a little bit of a general look at the topic of basically what does the Bible say about demons. And joining me today is Jeff, the administrator of BibleRef .com and Kevin, the managing editor of GotQuestions Ministries.

So just so our listeners know, this is going to be a series we're doing. So today we're not really going to be covering super in-depth the question of who or what is Satan. We're not going to be talking much about demon possession, and we're not going to be talking much about the sons of God, daughters of men, Nephilim question, but each of those are going to be separate episodes.

The Origin of Demons

So Kevin, why don't you start us off and let's talk about the origin of demons. What does the Bible say.

About where the demons came from? Yeah, well, and I think it is important that we go to Scripture and we look at what the Bible says, because there's so much, like you were saying, Shay, there's just so much information and theories out there.

We've got the movies, of course, the horror movies that deal with the demonic. We've got the books, we've got the urban legends, and the stories that are passed around, and we just really need to take a look at the Bible.

And what does the Bible say about demons and evil spirits and where did they come from? Well, Scripture says that all things are created by God and that in the beginning it was very good. So originally it looks like demons were angels.

They were angelic creatures of some kind that were good. They were righteous. They were servants of God. But then something happened and Peter in 2 Peter 2 and verse 4 talks about the angels that sinned.

And so there was some type of a sin that these angels committed. And Peter doesn't specify what that sin was, but it looks like when we start taking a look at Satan, that he had the sin of pride and so it's very likely that these demons followed Satan in that sin of pride and then were cast out of heaven.

And Jude also talks about, this is Jude 1 and verse 6, talks about the angels that kept not their first estate. So they had a position that was assigned to them by God and they left that position. They rebelled against that, said, no, I want to go do something else.

And so they sinned against God in that way. Pride was probably involved. And Revelation gives us kind of an interesting picture as well. In Revelation 12 and verse 4, Satan is pictured as a great dragon.

And then John sees a vision of this dragon that pulls one third of the stars out of heaven with his tail, cast them to the earth. So a lot of people take from that that one third of the angels followed Satan and his rebellion and were cast out of heaven.

So it looks like they came from heaven. Originally, they were good angels that fell. So the demons, we take to be fallen angels that sinned in some way and were judged by God and have been working against God ever since.

And so it looks like that's where the.

Demons come from biblically. Remembering where they come from is important to our understanding of what they can and cannot do. With you mentioning that demons, insofar as we can tell, are fallen angels, that means that we're not talking about angels and demons as completely and totally distinct beings when it comes to what they can do and what they cannot do and what they're like.

In other words, the things that we see in demons should, in theory, parallel the same things that we see in angels. Now, there's some things in scripture that imply that God has limited demons as compared to angels.

We see 1 Thessalonians chapter 2 make some comments about that. So it's not necessarily that demons are dealing with the exact same power set or the same skill set, but on a basic level, we would expect them to be fundamentally the same.

That means that they're non-material. They don't necessarily have some explicit gender. They don't have a specific physical appearance or physical form that they could communicate with people in similar ways to the ways that angels do.

Sometimes when we talk about angels and demons, we get wrapped up in those pop culture ideas and we start thinking about things like flowing white robes and white feathery wings and circles over people's heads and harps.

And then with demons, it's things like pitchforks and bat wings, or we think more of the scary looking monster type creatures, the drooling sort of a thing. And I think we need to remember that demons are just as intelligent as angels.

So they use tactics. So when we talk about demons from a biblical standpoint, we're not talking about these creepy special effects looking monsters that run around to do physical harm to people. We're talking about creatures that can be very tempting, very attractive, very influential in the way that they interact with people and that they'll pick good tactics, good ways to get to people.

They're not ripping persons apart limb from limb. They may be doing something very subtle, like putting just enough falsehood into our beliefs about who Christ is, who God is, how the world is to drag people away because that's what their goal is.

Their goal is not just mayhem for the sake of mayhem. The goal that demons have is to interfere with our relationship with Christ. So some of the things that we see in scripture that apply to angels, they apply in the sense of what demons are sort of like, but the vague things that we have don't give us a reason to support those things that we see in movies and comic books and everything else where you see these monstrous kind of things.

If we think of demons that way, then we're distracted and we're not thinking of the real dangers that demons and demonic entities would present. When we start looking through scripture,.

What Demons Do and How They Work

We start seeing some of the things that demons do. And there are several things that are kind of on their to-do list, as it were, and the one is they just in general oppose God's purposes. So whatever it is that God purposes to do in the world, they are trying to work against that, to make it difficult, to hinder, to throw up roadblocks to what God is doing here in this world.

They are opposed to God's will. They are presented in the New Testament as afflicting people. And so Jesus healed some people who were afflicted by demons. And so it looks like the demons were actually causing physical illnesses sometimes.

And we know that they're out there tempting people as well, and just bringing up accusations against them, working on false guilt in people's lives. The affliction could come in many different ways, but they afflict God's people.

They also want to execute Satan's purposes. Satan has a will, he has a plan, and he would like to see that moved forward. And we believe that the demons are working in concert with Satan and doing his bidding and working to advance Satan's agenda here in this world.

They hinder the spiritual life of God's people, and that's why we're given the armor of God. In Ephesians 6, we have that shield of faith that God gives us that quenches all of the fiery darts of the wicked one.

And praise the Lord for that, that all of Satan's fiery darts, and I'll just throw in here the fiery darts of the demons as well, they're being quenched by faith, the faith that we have in Jesus Christ.

But definitely, we have opponents, spiritual opponents in this world that are trying to hinder our walk with God, trying to turn us away from the love of God, trying to get us out of the word of God, and just not being everything that God wants us to be.

Like Jeff was saying, the purposes of the demons are probably not to terrify people and rip us limb from limb, but to simply turn our heads away from the author and finisher of our faith, the one that we should be looking at.

And of course, Bible also calls them lying spirits, and so they deceive. They are in the business of spreading lies as well.

When I look at a passage like 2 Corinthians 11, 14, that says that Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light, and therefore it should not surprise us that his servants also masquerade as angels of light.

In the context, it's referring more to false prophets, but I think this also applies to demons in that, as both of you said, the common Hollywood or cultural portrayal of that they're always terrifying ghosts or horrible looking creatures.

That doesn't seem to be what the Bible describes. The demons are more interested in deceiving us, and what better way to deceive us than to appear as if they're an angel of light? Even if you look at the different examples of false religions that have been started by an angel supposedly appearing to people, and it's never been a demon or someone appearing like Satan is typically portrayed in our work.

No, it's almost always Gabriel or some famous powerful angel who is claimed to have appeared to someone, and then as a result, a massive deception results in Islam. That's the origin of Islam. Even Mormonism is both of these religions with hundreds of millions of adherents started by presumably a demon impersonating an angel and thereby deceiving the person who became the founder of that religion.

I do not doubt that sometimes demons would be very interested in terrifying us if that is what needed to happen in order to draw us away from God, but I think most of the time, they're far more interested in deception and leading us astray.

As Kevin said, turning our heads just a little bit so we're off-focus, we're on a tangent rather than focusing on the things that God wants us to focus on. Demons are incredibly intelligent, just like the angels, and they will do anything to oppose God.

We use whatever means necessary, and we shouldn't limit ourselves in how we can envision demons doing their work to what's the common cultural portrayal, because that's not exactly how the Bible describes it.

Could they do those things? Of course, but the Bible seems to focusing the work of demons and Satan more on deception and by deception, destruction rather than outright destruction.

On the front end. When you talk about things like Islam, Mormonism, those are good examples, I think, for us to understand of how spiritual warfare is meant to work, where there's a message that does not seem immediately contrary.

It's not that the demon is going to somebody and saying, okay, here's what we'll do. We'll set up something that's completely false and completely wrong, and we'll deceive a lot of people. I mean, the demon is fooling the person that they're speaking to in the first place.

The solution or the counter to that is not that these men needed to have some amulet or some prayer or holy water or a circle of salt or something else like that. The answer was that they needed to compare the message they were hearing to the word that God had already given.

Had that been done in those cases, people would not have accepted those messages. They would not have done those things. They would have recognized that those were not right. Same thing applies when we talk about things like Ouija boards and cursed items and hexes and spells and pentagrams and hexagons.

I think if you went in your basement with a bunch of friends and drew a pentagram on the floor and chanted something from a book, you would be putting yourself in a lot of spiritual risk, but not because there's an actual magical element to that.

If you use a Ouija board, yes, you're risking that you're going to put yourself in communication with demons, but that has nothing to do with the actual physical object itself. It's because of the spiritual state that you're putting yourself in.

How open, how accepting, how gullible are you allowing yourself to be? I think the examples like that are helpful for us to remember that spiritual warfare is spiritual warfare. It isn't voodoo or magic or a form of strange science or alchemy or something like that.

It's about our relationship with God, the way we interact with him, and the way we gauge his word. For me, it's also interesting to consider the tactical side as we've been talking about what demons want to make people feel.

From a tactical standpoint, a lot of what I think you see in history and culture from the past until today shows smart tactics on the part of demons. If you wanted to disrupt some group or some area, if you could disrupt them and convince them that the people disrupting them didn't even exist, that they were just figments of their imagination, if I was going to do that, it would be very useful for me if the people I was trying to disrupt didn't even think I was real because that greatly increases my ability to affect them and to fool people.

Now, if I was in a condition where they obviously know that they are there or that I'm there, but we might as well just be blatant about it and go for the most carnage that we possibly can. I think that's one of the reasons why when we talk about demons, we wouldn't necessarily expect to see overt demonic possession or oppression or influence in cultures and areas where people have a lot of skepticism and doubt about whether demons exist.

It's to their advantage to be subtle and work in those ways. But in cultures and places in the world where that's not the case, where people already have a rooted acceptance that those are real, that's where the demon's most effective play is to lean into things like fear and coercion.

And so on and so forth. I really appreciate your emphasis there on the move that we need to make the move against superstition and the objects that people often associate with demons and demonic activity.

There's so much superstition that gets mixed into that. I think that that also bleeds over into some Christian thought where people start thinking, well, I'm protected from the demonic because I have this object.

I've got this talisman. I've got this cross I wear around my neck, and therefore, demons can't touch me. And of course, if you lose the necklace or something, then what? I mean, is it time to panic at that point?

But we're not protected from demons by objects either. That's just superstition. We are protected in Christ. He is the Savior. He is the Lord. He's the master, not just of us, but of the entire universe.

And we see that in his earthly ministry, Jesus had a power and authority over the demons. They were no match for him. This is Matthew chapter 8. We read this, that many who were demon-possessed were brought to Christ, and he drove them out with a word.

All it took was a word from Christ, and the demons had to flee. They were gone. Later on in that same passage, there were some demons that Jesus encountered, and they were terrified of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And they said, what do you want with us, Son of God? Have you come here to torture us before the appointed time? So, they know that there's an appointed time of their demise. They were afraid that Jesus was going to send them to their demise early, and they were terrified.

Jesus is the authority, and that's who we belong to. We belong to Jesus, and we don't have to fear demons as we are in Christ. He is our protector. He's our king, and one little word will send the demons fleeing.

Colossians 2 and verse 15 says that Jesus has disarmed the powers and authorities. He made a public spectacle of them on the cross, triumphing over them. And the victory is won as we still engage in skirmishes.

We still engage in spiritual battle, but Jesus, our king, has led the way to victory.

Spiritual Warfare, Fear, and the Limits of Demonic Power

I like the use of the terminology skirmish when you talk about that, because one of the thoughts that's in my mind is that there's dangers in Christians being overly paranoid and terrified about what demons can and cannot do.

There's also danger in the idea of assuming that because I am a Christian, that there is absolutely nothing any demon could do to influence me or to affect me in any way. And that's not true. I can't be possessed by a demon as a Christian because I have the Holy Spirit dwelling in me.

A demon can't just take control of me, but they can whisper, they can tempt, they can apply. From the skirmish standpoint, it's sort of like what we would refer to as an armored personnel carrier. If you're a soldier who's standing out in the field, you need to worry very much about another individual soldier coming up to you and doing something to you.

If you're in the armored personnel carrier, then that other individual soldier's ability to reach you is very limited, but it's not non-existent. He can still do things that will slow you down, that will get you off track, that will cause you problems.

So as Christians, we need to remember that demons cannot destroy us. They cannot control us. They cannot take us away from Christ, but they are still our enemies. They are still working to do things. And that's why we need to have sensitivity.

We need to have discernment. We need to have caution in the things that we say or do because our enemy is still out there looking to trip us up and looking to cause.

Us problems. Right. I think what both of you shared, Jeff and Kevin, on this reminds me of 1 John 4, 4, where it says, greater is he who is in you than he who is in the world. And that to me is the most powerful reminder that as powerful as the demons may be and as powerful as Satan is, possibly the highest of all the angels before he fell, which we'll get into in another episode, nothing in comparison to the Holy Spirit who's enjoying us.

So yes, we need to be aware of the spiritual conflict that's going around us. We need to be aware of the wiles of the devil and his demons, but we don't need to fear in the sense of they can't do anything to us that God would not allow.

And that's a tremendously powerful and important reminder. And it's something that a lot of people who ask us questions who are of the terrified of demons variety really need to focus in on is knowing that yes, the idea of demons, it's scary.

And I think it should be scary. But if we are walking with God, if we are focused on him, if we are living for him, there's nothing the demons can do to us that God has not allowed and that we can trust that he knows what he's doing and that his protection is infinitely greater than any attack the demons.

Could possibly wage against us. Another thing people need to remember, and I'm sure that this would be appropriate for us to explore more in depth in its own podcast, but sometimes we get overly concerned about trying to get down to details about demons.

We want to create this hierarchy, this taxonomy of them and deliverance ministries. For example, we want to assign a specific name, a specific demon to every single malady or every single problem or every single issue.

And that starts to drag into what Kevin was talking about with the idea of those superstitious things bleeding over. We're trying to systematize something that just doesn't need to be that complicated.

So you're right. We need to be concerned. We need to be cautious. We need to be careful, but we don't need to be superstitious and paranoid. God has given us tools. He's given us abilities. We can use those.

We don't need to be overly afraid or to try to squeeze answers.

Out of scripture that just aren't there. Yeah, absolutely, Jeff. Well said. It's hard to think of one other question that we should probably cover in this one, and it's related to the fact that Satan is not omnipresent.

Many Christians think, oh, Satan is attacking me, or you mentioned the deliverance ministry. I hear people rebuking Satan, and the book of Jude and Michael the archangel might have something to say about that, but Satan is not omnipresent.

But who knows if the verse in Revelation 12 about one-third of the stars being swept from the sky refers to angels becoming demons. It does not say how many demons there are, but with Satan and all of his demons, the dark spiritual forces, they're still not omnipresent.

They can be multipresent. They can be seemingly ever-present, but they're not omnipresent. So not every malady we're afflicted with is the result of a demon. Not every thought that pops into our head is the result of a demon.

But that leads us to a question I've seen just a few times recently, and we have an article on it. I think we just published a video on it. The whole, can Satan and or his demons read our minds? I think demons can tempt, but I don't see anything in scripture that would indicate that even Satan has the ability to literally implant thoughts in your head.

Even if he did, that would not obviously prevent God from protecting you from that influence. But I think it's more of the demons are incredibly intelligent beings, just like the angels, and they have been observing humanity now for thousands of years.

I don't know that they need to be able to read our minds to be able to know what we're thinking in a lot of situations. I think that their intelligence and observance of humanity for so long gives them a pretty good idea of what we're probably thinking and what they could tempt us with in that situation.

So this has led to even another, which I think is a very disturbing practice, and some view the gift of tongues as a code language between us and God. So when we're speaking in this language, the demons can't understand it, and therefore then they can't fight against my prayers.

Whether you believe the gift of tongues is active or not today, that is absolutely not what the Bible describes as the gift of tongues. And even if the demons could hear our prayers, that doesn't in any sense prevent God from answering them.

Even if Satan himself were actively listening to me praying to God, he would not be able to prevent God from answering that prayer, or he would not even be able to cause the answer to that prayer to be altered or hindered.

It's this whole concept of how powerful Satan and the demons are. A lot of people have a very skewed view of that, a very unbiblical view. And just realizing what the Bible actually says is very important in our relationship with God because it impacts how we live, how we think, why we do the things we do.

Demons are real. They're very real. Several theologians have said, I think, Jeff, you hinted at this earlier, that one of the biggest deceptions Satan has ever done is deceiving people into thinking he doesn't exist.

But at the same time, let's not go too far the other direction in thinking that every little thing that we do is related to demons, or to think that we have to take all these extraordinary measures to keep secrets from or to keep demons from influencing our thoughts, because those are not things that Scripture tells us to do.

So let's remember what Scripture says about spiritual warfare and focus on that rather than going down all these side paths that really at best are.

Questionable scripturally. Well, I'll just throw in here that we know what that end of the demons is. Scripture tells us that their destiny is the lake of fire one of these days. I mentioned this earlier about the demons that were interacting with Jesus and Matthew.

They knew of their coming demise, and they were fearful of it. And we read about it there in the book of Revelation as well, where they are going to be cast into the lake of fire, and that's going to go on forever and ever.

And so there is an end to the demons' work. God will see to that, and we praise the name of our.

Lord. Amen. So this has been the Got Questions podcast on what does the Bible say about demons, just giving a brief overview of the most common questions we receive and a little bit of a foundation for the topics we'll be covering in future weeks, which include who or what is Satan, what does the Bible say about demon possession, who are the Nephilim, and so forth.

So I look forward to those episodes. And Jeff and Kevin, thank you for joining me today. I appreciate your insights as well. Got questions? The Bible has answers, and we'll help you find them.