This is part of a series of posts about the demonic realm, specifically, about demon possession. Its not something discussed in church for various reasons. I suppose its considered dark subject matter and yet the scriptures devote some real estate to this topic. Its not dark if its in the bible. Its light. The Holy Spirit has exposed the spiritual forces of darkness: their identities, methods and their goals as well as how Christians are called to engage. You may not have heard some of this before, but I hope it’s interesting and edifying.

Knowing the Enemy

When I was in officer training for the US Air Force back in 1979, I received a lot of education about the principles of warfare. It was back in the day when we studied war and leadership instead of white privilege, climate change, and S&G propaganda. We were a better fighting force back then because we were trained, disciplined, and still had a reverence for God. It was the day of the (almost) 600 ship Navy and 750 F-22s (we bought only 187), the most remarkable aircraft in the world (and still is). A strong military.

My dad has stories of his time in the Air Force (yes, I am 2nd generation USAF) when it first began in the late 40’s and early 50’s. He ended up in Aviation Cadets, the precursor to the Air Force Academy. Back in that day, Sunday chapel was a mandatory formation, meaning you were ordered to show up for Mass as a Catholic or Protestant services if you were a non Catholic. You marched to the service and then marched back when it was done. I’ll have to ask him what was required of nonbelievers – but there were not that many in that time. Later in my own career, I knew we were in trouble when the crosses were removed from the base chapels, the Air Force Academy carved out a pagan worship area, and the chapels became shared facilities with Muslims and witches. But I digress.

In my study of warfare I became familiar with Sun Tzu and von Clausewitz. When my education was complete, I understood the principles of war. A key principle was to know the enemy: study the enemy, understand how they operate, know their capabilities, and never, never underestimate them.

The enemies of the United States respected us back then. Those who attacked the US would soon find the US Marines, the President’s own, coming their way. Operation Desert Storm was preceded by a continuous bombing campaign from the air to soften the enemy before the ground assault. And soften them we did. Often, when the ground forces showed up, the enemy just surrendered. When you are on the receiving end of arial bombardment every single day for months, you loose your will to fight. That’s war. The goal is one of two things: complete and unconditional surrender or the enemy, or complete destruction of their ability to make war. Period. There is no “proportional response” BS. War is overwhelming force to crush the enemy. Otherwise, they crush you. We always took great care to minimize collateral damage to civilians as we still do today. Our military forces were strong in those days.

I wish I could say the same today. Today the US military is weak. We are vulnerable and our allies are losing confidence. and aligning themselves with the other side. Sound familiar? I mean that the church is weak and people are leaving and aligning themselves with the other side.

These days, instead of training and equipping for battle, and seeking to know our enemy, we seem timid and more likely to appease the enemy. Chinese and Russian fighter jets routinely harass our aircraft in international airspace. They sense weakness and vulnerability which makes for a much more dangerous world. They now feel they have freedom to operate and pursue their own goals. They are probably right. A shame. Their goals are not going to do us any favors as a free country.

So What?

So what does this have to do with the current discussion on the demonic realm? Here is my point: We don’t know our enemy. We don’t train to be spiritually strong in the Lord against them. We’ve turned away from the only field operation manual we have: the Word of God. Because we don’t know our enemy, because we don’t train and adhere to the scriptures, we are weak. We give the spiritual enemy freedom to operate just as he pleases. And they do.

Few Christians are aware of all of the information we have in the Bible about the enemy, how he operates, and how to successfully engage and be victorious, not in what we can do in our own strength (which is nothing), but in what we are able to do in Christ who strengthens us.

Spiritual forces of darkness are ramping up their activity in the world today, and we just stand by and let them demonize and paganize our culture. Its time to act; not politically or socially but spiritually. That’s why I’m writing these posts. If you are a follower of Christ and you don’t understand your enemy, then these posts are for you, as a starting point. Go to the Word of God and pray for understanding. Tap into the great Christian research going on that is bringing back the first Century understanding of the unseen realm. The only alternative is to continue being manipulated and attacked by the forces of darkness as they deceive and draw our people away from the church and from the truth of scripture and into an ever deepening darkness and complacency. There is no middle ground. Step up. Our kids and your church are depending on you. Don’t let them down.

In the last post, I wrote some things about the ultimate enemy, the commander-in-chief of the demonic realm, Satan. There’s more.

More About Satan

In the last post, I indicated that Dr Michael Heiser made the case in his book, “The Unseen Realm” that Satan is an angelic being that was part of the Lord’s Divine Council that existed prior to the creation of mankind. Get some of the resources I identify in these posts. It’s a very interesting study.

This “Divine Council” consisted of angelic beings and is referenced in several places in the scriptures. As stated in the last post, the best insight about these beings is found in the Book of Job.

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

This passage in chapter 38 is a flash back to the creation of the earth. While there really isn’t much description of the beings in this passage, it does seem to distinguish between two different kinds of beings: the morning stars and the sons of God (vene haʾelohim) discussed in the previous post. Stars in the scriptures, in the context of spiritual beings, is in most cases a reference to angels. But the “sons of God”? Clearly they are supernatural beings in this passage but maybe a different type or class of angelic being. There are armies of angels, but there doesn’t seem to be too many of the vene haʾelohim, so logically, they must be different in type and/or rank.

This scene is at the time of the creation of the earth but before the creation of mankind. At this point in creation history, there does not seem to be any rebellion going on. There is singing and shouts for joy but no hint of rebellion by anything or anybody against God. All the spiritual beings are overjoyed at what the Supreme God, the pantokratōr (as it says in Rev 1:8) has done.

Going back to Job chapter 1, we find Satan doing his own thing roving on the earth. When the vene haʾelohim present themselves before the Lord, the satan does still come to stand before the Lord among the them.

Now the day came when the sons of God came to present themselves before the LORD—and Satan also arrived among them. The LORD said to Satan, “Where have you come from?” And Satan answered the LORD, “From roving about on the earth, and from walking back and forth across it.” So the LORD said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, one who fears God and turns away from evil.”

Job 1:6-8

Interesting how things have changed. The sons of God seemed all together in chapter 38, but now Satan does not seem part of them, at least not as it was before. Something is different. What happened between the time of the Earth’s creation in chapter 38 when there was rejoicing of all the sons of God and the morning stars, and chapter 1 where Satan stands apart from them? And why is he roving about on the Earth? This does bring another familiar verse to mind:

Be sober and alert. Your enemy the devil, like a roaring lion, is on the prowl looking for someone to devour.

1 Peter 5:8

One primary difference is that when all the sons of God were rejoicing at the creation of the Earth, man was not yet created. But chapter 1 of Job is clearly after the creation of mankind, after the fall of Satan who enchanted and deceived Eve, after the sin of Adam and Eve in the garden, and after the judgement of man that resulted in their ejection from the garden.

Begs the question: Why did Satan fall? Was it connected to the creation of mankind in the image and likeness of the Creator? Could it have been, as Dr Heiser maintains, that Satan and all of the angelic council were present when the Lord decided to create man in His image for the purpose of ruling the earth? Is ruling the Earth something the members of the divine council had thought they would be doing instead? Could this be the reason for Satan’s rebellion? Jealousy? It would explain the hatred Satan has for mankind.

You know, the whole incident in the garden is peculiar in that, as Dr Heiser maintains, Satan is just kind of chatting with Eve, like she knew him. Could it be that the vene haʾelohim had regular access to the Garden? They are just having a discussion like maybe other times, except this time, Satan has an agenda. I don’t think he was on-board with the mankind ruling the earth scenario. Now if Satan was fallen at this point, what was he doing there? Interesting. But, be that as it may, the deception occurred and judgement came.

As one created by God as a son of God, Satan is a fallen angelic being, going from a vene haʾelohim to a nâḥâš, but is he a demon? I think many people equate demons to fallen angels, but are they? I don’t think so because they seem different when a comparison is made. Let’s take a look.

Demons

The Bible does identify what some of the capabilities and behaviors of demons are:

• They are unseen spirits
• They can inhabit a human or animal host. The word used in the gospels for this is daimonizomai. More about this term in the next post
• More than one demon can inhabit the same host. In the case of the Gadarene demoniac, thousands of demons inhabited one or two men
• No indication of some sort of gender – no information regarding masculine or feminine
• They can communicate with other humans through their host
• They can give a human host supernatural strength
• When inhabiting a human and interacting with others, they may act with hostility and violence
• Demons have full control of the physical actions and mental faculties of the host. This is an important point when considering whether or not a demon can possess a Christian.
• They can afflict a human host with pain, mental suffering, and disease
• They are completely subordinate to Jesus Christ
• They are subordinate to the Apostles
• They are subordinate to the disciples by the power of the Holy Spirit
• They are not subordinate to unbelievers but instead afflict, harass, possess, and even attack them

Angels

Angels have their own capabilities and behaviors:

• Angels are also spiritual beings that appear visibly
• Always masculine; there are no feminine angels depicted in the bible
• In appearance, angels often take on corporeal form and show up in the form of men.
  • This may have been the case even with Gabriel informing Mary of her task from the Lord. While it is a little unclear, there is no indication of Gabriel appearing as a spirit in this particular passage. Its possible he came in the form of a man.
  • In the account of Sodom and Gomorrah, Genesis 18, two angels in the form of men accompany the Lord when He comes down to see the wickedness of these cities for himself.
  • Even the writer of Hebrews says that angels in the appearance of men cannot be recognized as angels:

Brotherly love must continue. Do not neglect hospitality, because through it some have entertained angels without knowing it.

Hebrews 13:1-2

• Angels also appear visibly as spirit beings, for example, the appearance of an angel to announce the birth of Christ and then the heavenly hosts appearing to the shepherds.
• There is little evidence that angels inhabit a host, human or otherwise. The only evidence we have of an angelic being inhabiting a human host is very specific from the following passage:

And after Judas took the piece of bread, Satan entered into him. Jesus said to him, “What you are about to do, do quickly.”

John 13:27

This verbiage is unique to Satan and the Greek word used is not the same as “possessed” in regard to demons. More about that in the next post. Based on this comparison, demons are apparently different than angels in many respects. In fact, I believe there is enough difference to conclude that they are a different type of spiritual entity. Some researchers have come to the conclusions that demons are disembodied spirits of the Nephilim of Genesis 6. They make a good case from the Bible and other ancient texts so its worth taking a look at their research.

Demons and the Genesis 6 Connection

This research suggests demons are the spirits of the Nephilim, the hybrid beings destroyed in the flood. Many researchers believe the primary reason for the destruction of the world in the flood was because of the genetic corruption of the human race that resulted from angelic tampering with the human genome to produce the Nephilim which were hybrid angelic/human entities.

Some scholars have postulated based on biblical research, ancient Ugarit texts, information in 1 Enoch and the Dead Sea Scrolls that these are the Rephaim, the spirits of the dead Nephilim. These entities are also known as the “travelers”, able to move between the netherworld and the physical realm through dimensional portals in specific places such as Gilgal Rephaim – The Circle of the Giants located in ancient Bashan, the land of the serpent.

Like I said, interesting stuff that has some merit for further study. If interested, see this article. I would also recommend a book by Derek and Sharon Gilbert entitled “Veneration” which is a deep dive into this subject matter. Another good book is by Ken Johnson called “Fallen Angels”. Dr. Johnson is a scholar who does extensive research of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

If the genetic corruption theory of Genesis 6 is correct, and I think it is, then likely tens of millions of Nephilim would have been destroyed all over the earth, their spirits condemned to roam the dry places of the earth looking for the next human host to inhabit in order to live out their existence. Since they were hybrid genetic combination of angelic beings (vene haʾelohim) with mankind, it’s logical to conclude every aspect of their being was also hybrid and corrupt including their spiritual makeup. Could the spirit of a Nephilim be part human and part angelic, perhaps having spiritual “receptors” that made inhabiting a human body possible? Speculation on my part. In my opinion, it is possible that the demons are a hybrid being that resulted from the demise of the Nephilim, based on the research I’ve seen and also since the descriptions Jesus gives about their behavior doesn’t track with fallen angels, which are currently beings of the air, not of the earth.

If you are interested in some of this research, I highly recommend the Gilbert’s books and Dr Johnson’s books as well.

The one point I’ll leave you with is this: while the Bible does not give direct information about WHAT demons are, the behavior of demons and how to deal with them is well covered in the scripture. In this time in which we are seeing more demonic activity, it is wise to educate yourself and prepare.

With these posts as background, the next post will be my answer about whether or not a born again Christian can be possessed by a demon.