Simon: Simony, Sorcery, Salvation. Acts 8:9-18

The area where this is taking place is in the area known historically as Samaria and should be referred to as Samaria. It is bogus to refer to it as the West Bank. Vocabulary is a battlefield. If the enemy wins a tactical victory by getting us to adopt their vocabulary then that partially wins the battle. The idea that there is this autonomous political entity that is comprised of Arabs and not under the Israeli government is really a violation of law.

Probably the strongest argument that we have for the fact that it is impossible for a Christian to be demon possessed is the language we have in the Bible describing the fact that the Christian is a temple created by the Holy Spirit, a temple for the indwelling of Jesus Christ. There are two Greek words heiros [e(iroj] and naos [naoj]. Heiros is always used to refer to the temple precinct. That refers to the outer courtyards—the courtyard of the women, the courtyard of the Gentiles. But the holy of holies is always referred to by the word naos. That is the inner sanctum. Unfortunately Christians have diluted the argument and said, premise: God indwells the believer; minor premise: Satan or demons cannot exist where God exists; conclusion: Christians therefore cannot be demon possessed because the Holy Spirit lives inside of every believer. The weakness of that view, as it will be responded to by others, is that we have passages like Job 1 and 2 where Satan comes into the presence of God in heaven. And Satan is still in the presence of God. It is not until Revelation chapter twelve that Satan and the demons are cast out of heaven, so how can we say that demons cannot be in the presence of God. The Bible doesn’t say that.

But the argument was mis-formulated. The argument is not God indwells every believer that demons cannot be in the same place that God dwells, the argument is that at salvation God makes the believer a naos temple. That is like the holy of holies in the temple. Nobody could enter the holy of holies in an inappropriate or unclean manner without dying on the spot. Evil could co-exist on the outer courtyard but not in the inner sanctum where God is. And the believer’s body is not a heiros temple of the Holy Spirit, it is a naos temple of the Holy Spirit. That is a powerful argument that Christians cannot be demon possessed because that would be a complete violation of this holy sanctum that the believer becomes at the instant of salvation by the indwelling of the Triune God. This is remarkable for many, many reasons but it clearly dispels this superficial reduction of the argument here that God indwells and where God is evil can’t coexist. That is just not true. It is clear from Scripture that Satan comes into the presence of God. But he is not coming into the naos, the inner temple which is the throne room of God. And nothing evil in all of the history of the tabernacle and the temple was allowed to come into that holy of holies. That is why when the high priest would go in on the day of atonement he had bells all along the hem of his robes so that as long as he was moving the bells would be heard. If the bells stopped ringing everybody would wonder what happened, and whether he was alive. And he had a rope tied to his ankle so that if he died in the holy of holies they could drag him out. Nobody could go in and get him. This just emphasizes for us the uniqueness and distinctiveness of what happens.

Biblical usage emphasizes going into and coming out as the defining characteristics of having a demon or being demon possessed. Demon possession occurs only when a demon or Satan takes up residence inside of a person, controlling their body and actions, but not so much as wiping out the existence and volition of the soul. They still have volition, buried as it might be. They can respond to the gospel, at which point the demon would be ejected.

By the way, the word exorcism is only used in the Bible to describe the actions of unbelieving magicians and sorcerers. The word exorkizo [e)corkizw] is never used with the actions of Jesus or the disciples. The word was ekballo [e)kballow] when they “cast out” a demon. Today the only way to cast out a demon is to give somebody the gospel, and if they respond then that demon is going to be ejected because that person is still there. That is the only way to do it. We are not authorized to cast out demons like the apostles were.

Think about it this way. If the epistles were given to church age believers to tell us everything we need to know about living the Christian life why is it that nowhere in any of the epistles from Romans to Jude is there a mention of demon possession. So if demon possession is the problem today that some Christians think it is then why is it ignored in the epistles? That is an argument from silence but the silence should be deafening. That should tell us right away that maybe it is not a problem. Maybe it is not an issue and maybe the issue today is simply the gospel.

In contrast to demon possession demon influence describes the person operating on thinking which originates from demons. There are two kinds of demon influence. There is an extreme demon influence which we see with Ananias and Sapphira, where Satan put it into their hearts to lie to the Holy Spirit, and Judas Iscariot where Satan put it into his heart to betray Jesus. That would be direct demon influence. But the rest of us are constantly under demon influence. And that is because it is simply nothing more than the influence of any kind of non-biblical thinking.

Who are the demons? What do we know about the origin of the demons? The demons originated after Satan fell. Satan was originally called Lucifer in Isaiah 14:12-14. If refers to the fact that he was the brightest of all the angels. The angels are often described as stars. Over a period of time he influenced a third of the angels to follow him in his rebellion against God, and we see this in Revelation 12:3, 4. That happens in the future and somebody may look at this and say this is describing events in the Tribulation when they are ejected from heaven. But it is also sort of describing a broad historical sweep that begins with the dragon and the description of the final form of the kingdom, and it just makes a past tense statement in verse four that his tail drew a third of the starts of heaven and threw them to the earth. They all get thrown to the earth half way through the Tribulation, but the next sentence says, “And the dragon stood before the woman who was about to give birth, so that when she gave birth he might devour her child.” The woman is Israel giving birth to the Messiah. That is historical; it refers back to the birth of Christ. So this statement by John is not talking about everything that is transpiring, he is giving us background information for identifying the dragon and the third of the angels that are with him that are ejected out of heaven at the mid point of the Tribulation.

The demons originated in eternity past. They are organized the same as elect angels. Terms such as principalities and powers, might, dominion, are terms that describe different hierarchies or different authority structures. Ephesians 1:21 ^NASB “[Jesus is raised] far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come.” The “rule and authority and power and dominion” is a reference to angelic authorities, fallen or elect. Ephesians 6:12 specifically uses these terms, and in 6:10 we are told that our war is not against visible powers, it is against invisible powers. So the only way we can know anything about it is through what the Word of God tells us because we can’t see our enemy. We can’t observe his influence, we can only follow the instructions that God has given us.

Ephesians 6:12 ^NASB “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness [KJV, “of this world”], against the spiritual {forces} of wickedness in the heavenly {places.}” The word “world” is an interesting term here. This is the word aion [a)iwn], a time word. It is a word that refers to a period of time but it is also a word that has the idea of the thinking that dominates that period of time. This is the word that we find in Romans 12:2 where it says “Do not be conformed to this world.” That is how it is translated, and should be translated because in this kind of a context aion and kosmos [kosmoj] are looking at the same thing but from different perspectives. kosmos looks at the false thinking of the creaturely world in terms of its organization, whereas aion looks at it in terms of the time span in which it operates. So we see that these are rulers of the darkness of this age. There is thought, purpose, planning. time frame. So the darkness is a representation of the dark system of thinking of Satan. We are fighting “against the spiritual {forces} of wickedness in the heavenly {places.}” This describes their order, their structure. We know from passages that talk about the warfare that we have is a word related to strategy. There is thought, purpose, planning. Satan is not just attacking the earth willy-nilly; there is structure and order in what he does. But we know from Job that Satan can’t do anything apart from God’s permission. He is not acting in pure autonomy. He must have God’s permission to do anything and had to seek God’s permission to test Job. And he is limited in his first request as to how far he can go. When he came back the second time God expanded his opportunities a little more.

The Old Testament emphasizes these fallen angels, though the Old Testament doesn’t give us as much of a demonology as the New Testament does. Deuteronomy 32”17 ^NASB “They [Gentiles] sacrificed to demons who were not God, To gods whom they have not known, New {gods} who came lately, Whom your fathers did not dread.” The false gods in the context (this is talking about idolatry) and Moses sees the real power behind the physical idols as demonic thought. So sacrificing to an idol was in reality sacrificing to the demonic religion that was expressed by that idol.

Ps 106:36, 37 ^NASB “And served their idols, Which became a snare to them. They even sacrificed their sons and their daughters to the demons.” So the demon is parallel to idols, and it is talking about in the act of human sacrifice, the sacrifice of infants in the Valley of Hinnom where they had set up the idols for Moloch and Kimosh who were the pagan gods of the Moabites and Ammonites. This is where paganism leads: to an absolute rejection of life. If you follow the path of truth and God you’re following life, but if you follow paganism and atheism it always leads to death. Demonism, which that is, always leads to death.

Leviticus 17:7 ^NASB “They shall no longer sacrifice their sacrifices to the goat demons with which they play the harlot…” Again identifying demons are the real power behind the idols, the false gods.

All of these verses give us an understanding of showing the connection between demons and false religion—any false religious system. Remember that a religious system can both affirm and deny God. If the statement “there is a God” is religious then the statement “there is no God” must also be religious. So atheism is just as much an idolatrous system as any other false religion.

1 Corinthians 10:20 ^NASB “{No,} but {I say} that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons and not to God; and I do not want you to become sharers in demons.” This is all part of that recognising in the world that when we are buying into false religious thinking it is demonic in its origin and source.

We also know that fallen angels are comprised of various groups. A third of the angels are fallen angels but not all fallen angels are active demons. There are three groups of demons. The first is a group that is in a position of being under bondage and in prison today. They are mentioned in Jude 6 and 2 Peter 2:4. This is a reference to genesis chapter six, the episode about the “sons of God.”

Genesis 6:1 ^NASB “Now it came about, when men began to multiply on the face of the land, and daughters were born to them, [2] that the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful; and they took wives for themselves, whomever they chose.” The “sons of God” is a term that refers to angelic beings. We know because of what they are doing that these are fallen angels, but the term can refer to either elect angels or fallen angels and the reason they are called sons of God is because the angels were each individually created by God. The term always refers to angels in the Old Testament. If this passage in Genesis 6:2ff doesn’t describe fallen angels then it really makes it almost impossible to understand what is going on in Jude 6 and 2 Peter 2:4.

Jude 1:6 ^NASB “And angels who did not keep their own domain [their original position], but abandoned their proper abode, He has kept in eternal bonds under darkness for the judgment of the great day.” They are currently under condemnation. What this verse implies is that as fallen angels they were already under a judgment. Matthew 25:41—God created the lake of fire for the devil and his angels. So there is an indictment and a condemnation of all of the angels that followed Satan in his rebellion. But among those who followed him in that rebellion was a sub-set who committed the Genesis 6 sin, and they are in a temporary place of punishment right now—reserved in eternal bonds under darkness, for what? The judgment of the great day. In other words, there is also another judgment and another punishment on top of the one already announced that is going to come upon them. They are all headed for the lake of fire. Currently they are in the abyss under chains of darkness and ultimately there is going to be another pronouncement of their guilt and additional punishment will be enforced in the lake of fire. That, again, indicates that there are degrees of punishment in the lake of fire.

Jude 6 is a fascinating passage because it states that “the angels who did not keep their proper domain but left their proper abode, He has kept in eternal bonds under darkness for the judgment of the great day. [7] just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities around them, since they in the same way [similar manner] as these [angels] indulged in gross immorality and went after strange flesh, are exhibited as an example in undergoing the punishment of eternal fire.” This seventh verse talks about the sexual sin of Sodomy in Sodom and Gomorrah that is in a similar or like manner as the sin of these angels. So that phrase tells us that in Jude 7 the sin of the sodomite is somewhat similar to the sin of these angels. That means it was a sexual sin.

2 Peter 2:4 ^NASB “For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to pits of darkness, reserved for judgment.” This verse refers to the same incident as Jude 6. All the fallen angels were already judged in eternity past but this group, because they committed additional crimes and sins, has additional judgment, punishment and condemnation.

Then there is the group who are in the abyss. This is described in the fifth trumpet judgment in Revelation 9:1 ^NASB “Then the fifth angel sounded, and I saw a star from heaven which had fallen to the earth; and the key of the bottomless pit was given to him. [2] He opened the bottomless pit, and smoke went up out of the pit, like the smoke of a great furnace; and the sun and the air were darkened by the smoke of the pit. [3] Then out of the smoke came locusts upon the earth, and power was given them, as the scorpions of the earth have power… [7] The appearance of the locusts was like horses prepared for battle; and on their heads appeared to be crowns like gold, and their faces were like the faces of men. [8] They had hair like the hair of women, and their teeth were like {the teeth} of lions. [9] They had breastplates like breastplates of iron; and the sound of their wings was like the sound of chariots, of many horses rushing to battle.”

These are demonic creatures, so they have a bizarre appearance. These are not human armies; they are demonic armies that are released upon the human race.

Revelation 9:10 ^NASB “They have tails like scorpions, and stings; and in their tails is their power to hurt men for five months. [11] They have as king over them, the angel of the abyss; his name in Hebrew is Abaddon, and in the Greek he has the name Apollyon.”

The different components of the abyss that we see in Scripture: Paradise, also called Abraham’s bosom, Luke 23:39-43, and Ephesians 4:8-10 which tells us that Paradise has now been transferred to heaven. This is where all Old Testament saints went when they died, up to the cross i.e. until the penalty of sin was paid. Then they were taken to heaven. So all that is left in Hades now are the three other compartments, the first of which is called torments, which is where all unsaved human beings go as a place of temporary punishment. It is not pleasant, the rich man is sent there and he describes it as a place of heat, a place where he is thirsty, and there is no relief—Luke 16:19-31. All unbelievers go there until they are called out for the great white throne judgment at the end of the Millennial kingdom.

Then there is the abyss the location of the demon army seen at the judgment of the fifth trumpet. This is described in Luke 8:30, 31 ^NASB “And Jesus asked him, “What is your name?” And he said, “Legion”; for many demons had entered him. They were imploring Him not to command them to go away into the abyss.” Also Revelation chapters 9 & 20:1-3. This is where Satan will be bound for a thousand years.

The fourth compartment is Tartarus, the place where the chains of darkness where the “sons of God,” the fallen angels of Genesis 6, are imprisoned.

A third group of demons comprise an army of 200-million. These are part of the sixth trumpet judgment in Revelation. Revelation 9:13 ^NASB “Then the sixth angel sounded, and I heard a voice from the four horns of the golden altar which is before God, [14] one saying to the sixth angel who had the trumpet, ‘Release the four angels who are bound at the great river Euphrates.’” This is on the eastern border of the land God promised to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. [15] And the four angels, who had been prepared for the hour and day and month and year, were released, so that they would kill a third of mankind. [16] The number of the armies of the horsemen was two hundred million; I heard the number of them.” These are not the Chinese, they are demons. This is a demonic army that is released.

In our passage in Acts chapter eight these unclean spirits come out and there is a deliverance. Why? Because they are announcing the gospel and the Messiah. This is all part of what the Messiah would bring, and the result is there is great joy in the city. But then we are told about a certain man called Simon who previously practiced sorcery in the city.

The word here for “sorcery” is the verb mageuo [mageuw] from which we get our word “magic.” It ultimately derives from a Persian word for a Median tribe called the Magi who eventually rose to a place of political prominence in the government of the Parthian empire, so they were the ones who chose the kings. They were the most powerful of the tribes. Because of their expertise in astrology and sorcery their name became associated with that, and so that is how we get the development of the verb mageuo which would be the idea of practicing magic. This was not just some slight of hand, they were truly practicing a demon empowered magic.

The other word that is used for sorcery in the New Testament is pharmakeia [farmakeia], from which we get our word “pharmacy.” It refers to the fact that they used hallucinogenic drugs in the practice of their religious system in order to have an outer body experience of some type where they would get in touch with the demons. That is the emphasis here in pharmakeia.

Acts 8:13 ^NASB “Even Simon himself believed; and after being baptized, he continued on with Philip, and as he observed signs and great miracles taking place, he was constantly amazed.” He is a believer. But is he? That is the question.

Simon Magus becomes the bogey man in early Christianity. When Iranaeus wrote in his book Against the Heretics in about 160-170 AD that Simon Magus is the originator of Gnosticism. So whether it is the historical Simon Magus who became apostate and then got involved in all kinds of Gnosticism or whether it was simply that his name was used and coopted by Gnostics, by the second century Simon Magus is the wicked witch of the east. He is everybody’s evil person. There are volumes written about Simon Magus, and all of his Gnosticism, magic, demonism, the occult, and everything finds a home in Simon Magus. So it is assumed that the Simon Magus of the legends is historically this Simon Magus. There is no evidence to prove that but the thing is, if he becomes this horrible heretic then almost every Christian every theologian we talk to says Simon really wasn’t a believer.

We don’t know. Anybody can commit any sin. The issue isn’t what sins we have committed, the issue is, have we trusted in Christ to pay for the sins? He either paid for all of them or He didn’t pay for any of them. We have to understand that throughout Scripture the emphasis is always believe, and it doesn’t say Simon superficially believed or Simon partially believed, or Simon fooled everybody into thinking he believed; it says Simon believed.

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