Demonic
Assaults. Rev. 9
Before we get into the sixth trumpet judgment we need to pause and
review what the Bible teaches about demons and their involvement in human
history. Again and again as we go through our study of Revelation we keep
coming back to this whole doctrine of Satan and demons because God is not only
bringing human history to a close in terms of judging the sins of nations and
those in rebellion against Him but He is also bringing to a close the judgments
upon the demons and upon Satan.
In the last two verses of Revelation chapter nine we have a conclusion
to these last two judgments. After all of this horror and terror and when a
third of the human race has been killed in the last trumpet judgment alone, the
sixth—and that is not counting the others who have died in the other
judgments—we read: Revelation 9:20 NASB “The rest of
mankind, who were not killed by these plagues, did not repent of the works of
their hands, so as not to worship demons, and the idols of gold and of silver
and of brass and of stone and of wood, which can neither see nor hear nor walk;
We see that same trend in many cultures today that are dominated by
various human viewpoint systems of thought that as people who are atheists,
people who are unbelievers, resist what Christians do. They become more and
more hostile. It is the truth being attacked by Satan, the truth being attacked
by those who reject God, and they are not attacking these other religions
because Satan is not using his different religious systems to attack one
another, the focus is to destroy the credibility of the truth. It is the truth
that generates hostility and the lie does not generate that kind of hostility.
So to understand all of this we have to understand what the Bible teaches about
Satan and demons and how human history fits within this overall framework of
what we call the angelic conflict or Satan’s rebellion against God.
Who are the demons and from
whence did they come?
The term “demon” describes these
angels who followed Lucifer in his rebellion against God in eternity past. We
recognise that God created the angels initially as perfect creatures. He
created angels before He created anything else, they were intelligent beings,
their bodies are immaterial, and they have volition, i.e. a capacity to make
decisions related to their worship of God, their service to God which affected
their destiny. He created them with different orders, different ranks, and
different abilities. There are three that are most prominent, especially when
it comes to the study of the angelic conflict and the study of Revelation. The
first are the cherubim. When we see them in Scripture they are always
associated with the operations of the throne of God—protecting the throne of
God, guarding the presence of God. The first time we see a cherub in the
Scriptures is when we see cherubs posted outside of the garden of Eden to
protect it so that man no longer has access to the tree of life. But remember
that
The second order of angels are called seraphs. They are very similar to
cherubs and are also associated with the throne of God and the holiness of God.
They are pictured in Isaiah chapter six and yet there is one distinction from
cherubs. Cherubs have four wings and seraphs have six wings. The seraphs seem
to be associated, though, with angelic worship of God, whereas the cherubs are
associated with guardianship or protection of the throne.
There is a third class that is very similar to cherubs and seraphs, and
that is the living creatures we see in Revelation chapters four and five. They,
too, are associated with the throne of God and the worship of God. Like cherubs
they are also identified as living beings, but unlike cherubs which have four
wings, they have six wings. Like seraphs they also sing praise to the holiness
of God.
We also note from Scripture that there is an archangel, the archangels
Michael. There is one messenger angel, Gabriel, and he is specifically
associated with disclosing revelation, especially that which is related to
God’s plan for
As the highest and most influential of the angels Lucifer succumbed to
arrogance. He is the poster child of the saying: “It is all about me.” He was
the first one to come up with that idea and he expressed it in the five “I
wills” in Isaiah
Eventually we know that God convened some kind of trial and He
determined the sentence or punishment for these fallen angels and for Satan.
This is referred to in Matthew 25:41. This mentions the fact that God has
prepared the lake of fire for the devil and his angels. If the lake of fire has
already been prepared (perfect tense of the verb) that indicates that it is
located in a specific place today, it is in existence, but it is empty. God has
not sent Satan or the demons there yet. There is a hold placed on the final
execution of that sentence. So human history fits within the reason that that
hold occurs. Satan apparently accused God of being unfair, unjust, of not
giving him a chance to really show what he could do in ruling the angels and
the universe, including the earth. Within this there are different aspects to
this challenge. Satan wants to prove that he can do what God can do. So God
then determined on a demonstration to give Satan the opportunity to show what
he could do, but within that demonstration what God is demonstrating is that no
creature is capable of running the universe. There is no creature that has the
omniscience, the omnipotence to be able to carry out the goal of running
something like the universe.
Five
things that God is going to demonstrate within human history
1. He is going to
demonstrate His righteousness. Satan challenges God’s righteousness: How can a
righteous God sentence His creatures to eternity in the lake of fire? God is
going to demonstrate that He is perfect righteo0usness and this is the only
acceptable judgment.
2. He is going to
demonstrate His justice, that He is just, that this is a fair and just
sentence. The reason is that in human history God demonstrates that even the
most innocuous of sins (such as eating a piece of fruit) results in such chaos
and calamity, such suffering, such heartache that we have seen in human
history, that a sentence of eternity in the lake of fire is mild compared to
all that flowed out of this kind of a rebellion. So God demonstrates His
justice and His righteousness.
3. He also
demonstrates His love, that love is totally compatible with righteousness and
justice, and that the execution of judgment on a disobedient creature is just
as much a part of love as providing salvation for others.
4. Also it
demonstrates the inability of the creature to rule creation. No creature has
the capacity, the knowledge or the power to truly rule creation.
5. It demonstrates the
cataclysmic consequences of sin—that sin is never just a little white sin, it
always has unintended consequences and results in terrible suffering upon
billions and billions of creatures.
Demonic assaults within human
history
We recognise that Satan has a strategic goal in relation to the human
race and to the angelic conflict, and that is to demonstrate the ability to
govern creation and, secondly, that God can’t accomplish His ends. He is trying
to do two things. First of all, that he can truly govern creation, and
secondly, to show that God can’t. He is going to try to accomplish the first
but the problem is that once he led Adam into sin he generated a whole lot of
little gods who are in competition with him. Every human being wants to be God,
just like Satan does, and the fact that there is all of this horror, all of
this warfare, all of this disaster on planet earth is a testimony to the fact
that Satan just can’t control things. It is not that his agenda is horror and
chaos, His agenda is to promote piece and stability and show that he can rule
as God does. And the fact that we have all these horrors going on is testimony
that he can’t accomplish what he intends to accomplish. His second objective is
to destroy God’s ability and this primarily manifested in his assault against
the Jews, because God has promised Abraham and the descendants of Abraham that
he will give them that piece of real estate in the Middle East and that they
will exist in peace and harmony and have a fantastic kingdom under the rule and
reign of the Messiah. So if Satan can stop that by destroying all the Jews before
God fulfils His promise then he can show that God is incapable of doing what He
has promised to do. So there is this two-pronged strategy: to promote his own
ability to rule and govern the creation and to show that God can’t do it.
The second thing we note in terms of these assaults is that there are
several ways in which Satan attacks the human race. The primary way is through
demon influence. There is a difference between demon influence and demon
possession. Demon influence is Satan’s attempt to subvert and influence man’s
thinking. So demon influence has to do with Satan’s attempt to influence the
thinking of man against God. This has occurred throughout human history in both
direct ways and in indirect ways. Demon influence is related to thought
systems. It is related to religious ideas. There are all kinds of world
religions that are promoted by Satan in order to distract people from the truth
and to divert their attention from the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. All of
them, with the exception of biblical Christianity, emphasise human morality or
good works as a means to eternal life, a means to a relationship with God. Then
there are various philosophies that don’t talk anything about God but they
promote different forms of morality, different forms of human enrichment. These
are what are sometimes referred to as worldviews or frameworks of thinking
about life, and Satan promotes these different worldviews and frameworks to get
people to think and organise all that the data of life so that they think that
they really understand what life is all about apart from God, apart from the
truth of the Scripture. Ultimately all of these thought systems appeal to the
arrogance of the sin nature, to the lust patterns of the sin nature, and to the
trends of everybody’s sin nature. So there is something out there for everybody
that means that you don’t have to admit that you are a creature who is
dependent upon God, who has been in rebellion against God.
Satan uses his attempts to influence man two ways: directly and
indirectly. Mostly it is indirectly, but we have some examples in Scripture of
his direct attempts to influence man. The first is in the garden of Eden.
Satan, speaking to Eve, misquoted God, but he had already predisposed her
thinking by the way he chose to question her. He influences her thinking by the
questions he asks her because that gets her focus on the wrong thing. So it is
necessary to be careful before answering certain question. You have to think
through questions very carefully. So we see this direct way in which Satan
sought to influence the woman. A parallel to that is Satan’s attempt to
influence the thinking of Christ in the temptations in the wilderness. These
are direct attempts, but mostly Satan uses indirect attempts through human
thought systems and appeals to the sin nature.
One example in the life of Christ is in Luke 22:31 where Jesus warned
Peter that he will betray Him. Peter has adamantly stated that he will never
betray the Lord. NASB “Simon, Simon, behold, Satan has demanded
{permission} to sift you like wheat.” There is no picture anywhere in the
betrayal of Christ by Peter of Satan overtly and directly influencing Peter. It
is done subtly through indirect means through his sin nature. Another example
from Peter occurs in Matthew 16:23 and that context occurs immediately after
Peter has made this profound admission that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of
God. Immediately after that Christ began to warn the disciples that He would be
taken to
Demon influence affects believers and unbelievers alike. Whenever we
operate on any kind of a thought system that is apart from the Word of God we
are operating on demon influence. Any kind of human viewpoint is demon
influence. If it is not biblical then it is demon influence. The solution to
demon influence (also called worldliness) is to take in and to study the Word
of God and let the Word of God change the way in which we think. Romans 12:2 NASB
“And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of
your mind…” That’s how we get rid of all that demonic influence that is in our
souls—through the study of the Word of God. Also Ephesians 6:10-17 describes
putting on the armour of God to protect us from demon influence, and ultimately
that has to do with the Word of God and the Spirit of God.
The other way in which Satan seeks to influence things is through demon
possession. Demon possession occurs when one or more of these immaterial
demons, also called evil spirits or fallen angels, invade the body of an
unbeliever and take over the control of his body. It doesn’t destroy the
personality or the consciousness of the individual because an individual who is
under demon possession can still respond to the truth of the gospel. And that
is the only way in which they can be delivered from that demon and that that
demon can be removed from them—by trusting Christ as their saviour. Demon
possession can only occur in unbelievers. A lot of believers can become
psychotic or come under all kinds of emotional disturbances and have other
problems that may imitate the characteristics of demon possession, but it is
not demon possession. 1 Corinthians 3:16 tells us that the believer’s body is
the temple of the Holy Spirit, and that word for “temple” is one of two words
used for temple in the New Testament. One word describes the entire temple
complex. Anyone could go into the courtyard of the outer temple. But the other
word that is used for temple in the New Testament is the word naos [naoj] which refers only
to the inner sanctum where only the priest could go, and this is where the
presence of God is. If anything unclean, anything that had not gone through the
ritual processes of cleansing, went into the holy of holies or the holy place
then they would die instantly. That which is unclean cannot come into the
presence of God in the inner sanctum. That is what this passage talks about. It
is not just the fact that the believer is indwelt by the Holy Spirit but that
the believer is made a special sanctified holy place for the indwelling of the
Lord Jesus Christ. It makes it impossible by that terminology to be indwelt by
a demon.
Another way in which Satan attacks the human race has occurred in terms
of direct demonic assault. There is one in the Old Testament and there are
three in Revelation. The Old Testament one is what gives us a pattern for
understanding the ones in Revelation. It has to do with the demonic assault
that occurred in Genesis chapter six. Genesis 6:1, 2 NASB “Now it
came about, when men began to multiply on the face of the land, and daughters
were born to them,
Two passages in the New Testament affirm this. One is in Jude 6, 7 NASB
“And angels who did not keep their own domain [original place], but abandoned
their proper abode, He has kept in eternal bonds under darkness for the
judgment of the great day,
Peter has two passages. 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.” That is not talking about the
original fall, it is talking about the Genesis 6 event. This can’t refer to the
fallen angels as a whole and the act of following Lucifer because that would
mean that all the fallen angels are chained in darkness and reserved for
judgment, but we know from episodes in the life of Christ that there are
certain demons who are still free to operate. It can’t refer to all the fallen
angels but only to a group of them. This sin of theirs is related to the time
of Noah in 2 Peter 2:5.
Then in 1 Peter 3:18-20 NASB “For Christ also died for sins
once for all, {the} just for {the} unjust, so that He might bring us to God,
having been put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit;
The role of demons in relation
to believers in the church age
The role of demons is restricted in the church age. They are not
visible; they are not as overt as they were at certain times in the Old
Testament or as they will be in the Tribulation. But they are still the agent
of Satan and very much involved in promoting primarily demon influence among
the human race. Believers don’t need to worry and focus on Satan or demons
because the focus needs to be on the Word of God. We need to understand the
truth of God’s Word and, as Paul says in Ephesians 6, we need to put on the
full armour of God. It is through the Word of God that we are protected and it
is on the basis of God’s truth that God takes care of believers. We need to arm
ourselves with the truth of God’s Word and that is our only protection.