If you look around at the world today, things are looking bleak. War, human trafficking, people groups set against one another, antisemitism, hatred, death, destruction, depravity; all accelerating in a world that has rejected God and His Word. What happens when a people, a nation turns its back on God?

Author and pastor Jonathan Cahn made an insightful observation that when a nation, a people turn their back on God, that when a house which was once set in order by the Lord and his Word, becomes vacated, then the unclean spirit which was once banished from that house by the presence and blessing of God, will then return and bring more unclean spirits. The result is the spiritual condition of that house becomes seven times worse than originally. His assessment is that those spirits are back. The spiritual vacuum created by the rejection of God is filling rapidly with the ancient unclean spirits that manifest in the temporal realm as pagan gods and pagan beliefs that drive the social, spiritual and political trajectory of our nation and the world.

When an unclean spirit goes out of a person, it passes through waterless places looking for rest but does not find it. Then it says, ‘I will return to the home I left.’ When it returns, it finds the house empty, swept clean, and put in order. Then it goes and brings with it seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they go in and live there, so the last state of that person is worse than the first. It will be that way for this evil generation as well!

Matthew 12:43-45

The context of this passage is a person, not a nation. But can the spiritual concept be extended to a nation? I believe it is a valid extension of the principle. I will get back to this passage in the next post about demon possession.

The apostle Paul wrote about dark spiritual forces, the unseen demonic realm, operating below the radar and behind the scenes.

For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavens.

Ephesians 6:12

They are real and operative today. Yet most people, even Christians, ignore them. We engage in the temporal, visible realm through politics and social media, falling into the hands of these spirits. These spiritual entities, masters of deception, are thus free to operate, leading people away from truth into error.

What are demons?

The unseen, demonic realm is operative in the world today. What is a demon; what are we dealing with? This is a more difficult question to answer because the bible does not have much information about WHAT demons are, although there are some traditional beliefs (and perhaps some poor assumptions) in the church.

The best information we have about demons is found in the gospels which interestingly does not tell us much about WHAT demons are. The gospels, through the ministry of Messiah do tell us: 1) how demons operate against people and 2) how Jesus and his followers (including us) engage with them. While the ministry of Jesus in the Gospels do provide useful intelligence we don’t find anywhere else in the Bible, I want to offer some perspectives about the possible origin of demons from the Old Testament, as developed from some recent scholarship on this very topic.

Demons in the Old Testament

First of all, like I said in part 1, this is an elusive topic in Christian teaching and experience. We gloss over Ephesians 6, where we get explicit information about the demonic realm and how to engage, but Christians just don’t get much training in this area, and then we wonder why the world has become so dark, deceived and violent. The scant knowledge Christians have in this area usually is distorted and unbiblical. It’s hard to cover so much ground in a blog format, but I’ll try to give the 50,000 foot view.

It’s hard to get a handle on an entity in the Old Testament that would be considered a demon. There are several places that are sometimes translated “evil spirit”, for example in Judges 9:23 and also 1 Sam 16 where David was anointed King and the Spirit of the Lord departed Saul and a different spirit entity was sent by the Lord to torment Saul. While the concept of a demon is not as fleshed out in the Old Testament as much as in the New Testament, there are some interesting passages that have recently been revisited by some scholars, as well as other ancient writings such as the Dead Sea Scrolls and other pagan documentation which corroborates the bible. Again, this kind of research has just come to light in the last 20-30 years and made more widely available through media such as YouTube and ministries such as Prophecy Watchers, SkyWatchTV, LA Marzuli, and some others. These forums provide access to some very interesting research. More about some of this information in the next post.

But right now, I want to talk about the elephant in the room…

Is Satan a Demon?

The incident in the Garden of Eden in Genesis 3: the serpent deceives Adam and Eve leading to the judgement of mankind. Is the serpent a demon? The serpent is the nâḥaš. This word carries an occultic meaning as “enchanter” which dovetails nicely with the deception in the garden. Revelation 12 equates the serpent with a great dragon and Satan:

So the great dragon was thrown out — the ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the one who deceives the whole world. Revelation 12:9

This tracks pretty well with the serpent in the garden: nâḥaš, serpent, the one who deceives = the devil and Satan. It’s logical to deduce that the nâḥaš and Satan are one and the same.

Is the serpent really a slithering snake as is typically depicted in ancient Christian art? There are a number of perspectives about this ranging from ancient Jewish tradition that takes this literally as a talking snake to Josephus who postulated that Satan spoke through a snake. In either case the important point here is that the account was taken as literal – it happened just a described.

A recent analysis is offered by the late Dr Michael Heiser in his book “The Unseen Realm”. Dr Heiser’s perspective is that the “serpent” is a supernatural entity that was part of the Divine Council, an entourage of beings also known as the ḇên ’elôhîym, translated as the “sons of God” in Genesis 6 and Job 38:7.

There are only a few places in the Old Testament where this term exists but we get the best perspective about their nature from Job which indicates these are supernatural beings, angelic beings created by God prior to the creation of mankind. In fact they apparently were present at the creation of the earth and later (as Dr Heiser presents in his book), at the creation of Adam and Eve.

“Where were you
when I laid the foundation of the earth?
Tell me, if you possess understanding.
Who set its measurements—if you know—
or who stretched a measuring line across it?
On what were its bases set,
or who laid its cornerstone—
when the morning stars sang in chorus,
and all the sons of God shouted for joy?”

Job 38:4-7

We see the term alluded to again in Psalm 82 which describes an assembly in which God pronounced judgement on beings that acted with injustice and show preference for sinners in opposition to God’s instructions to them to defend, vindicate, and rescue the poor, fatherless, and needy.

If a translator’s viewpoint is biased to a more naturalistic mindset then the meaning conveyed is that these beings are humans (for example the NASB). Honestly, most translations are faithful, capturing the meaning meant in the original text, which indicate these beings are angelic – an assembly of the gods (little “g”) under the rule of the supreme God Yahweh. In this case, the supreme God, Yahweh, appears among these gods to bring judgement against them.

God stands in the assembly of El;
in the midst of the gods he renders judgment.

Psalms 82:1 (New English Translation)

El is likely the chief Canaanite god as alluded to here in the NET translation. He apparently has his own rebellious assembly together for a staff meeting when the Lord appears among them. They are corrupt, rebellious beings that were apparently given the task to bring justice and rescue to the poor and needy from the hands of sinners. They chose to rebel and are judged.

I thought, ‘You are gods;
all of you are sons of the Most High.’
Yet you will die like mortals;
you will fall like all the other rulers.”

Psalms 82:6-7

You know this is interesting. The very thing the Lord expected these powerful (but subordinate) gods to do, He did Himself when He brought the sons of Israel out of Egypt. When they get safely to the mountain, the first thing the Lord does is set the Law in place along with the ordinances that would establish a system of just and orderly society in relationship with Him. These lesser, rebellious gods should have done the same but didn’t. And so they are judged. You can almost see the disappointment in the words of the Psalm.

What does this have to do with demons? Demons are clearly spiritual entities. The point here is to show that 1) there were spiritual entities, angelic beings, created by God for an oversight function as part of an angelic council under His authority and 2) there were some that rebelled.

We’ve established that the rebellious spiritual entities here, the ḇên ’elôhîym are angelic beings and apparently the serpent in the garden, Satan nâḥaš, was one of these. But these fallen angels, including Satan, are they demons? Possible, but I don’t think so.

There is more to this story that flows from Genesis chapter 6 and I’ll leave that to the next post.