The Bible Nerd

My son decided last night to ask me a Bible question.  I was so stoked that he cared about the Bible and had a question for me, that I couldn’t wait to hear what that question would be.  So, he turns to me and says, “Wasn’t Satan the music minister in heaven?”  I was expecting either the humorous, “Do pets go to heaven?” or perhaps the more serious, “Can we trust the Bible Dad?”  Instead, I got one of the all time urban legends of Christianity.  This falls somewhere in between the Nephilim and UFO’s in the Bible.

The bottom line is that the Bible simply doesn’t say much about Satan before his fall.  In fact, the Old Testament has almost nothing to say about him at all.  That is where the true rub is.  We want to know.  We must know.  In that curiosity, we must be careful, however, not to read to much into certain Scriptures.  After studying the Bible at school for 9 months, I still could not figure out where the music minister thing came from.  Then, I was preparing to teach the book of Ezekiel, and stumbled upon a commentator who said that some people have said that chapter 28:11-19 is speaking about Satan. I was puzzled by this, because in 28:11 Ezekiel tells us who this passage is about, “Son of man, raise a lamentation overthe king of Tyre, and say to him, Thus says the Lord God”.  It seemed clear to me, so why Satan, and still where is the music deal?

As you read the passage, God uses figurative language to describe the position of power God gave the king, the king’s pride, and then his eventual fall.  In verse 13, he says of the king, “You were in Eden, in the garden of God.” Ah ha, here is the first thing people point to as proof it is talking about Satan.  The king of Tyre wasn’t in Eden, but Satan was!  The second piece of evidence they give is in verse 14, “You were a guardian cherub, I placed you; you were on the holy mountain of God;”  Ok, we know for sure that the king of Tyre wasn’t a cherub, and definitely wasn’t on the mountain of God.

The problem with these interpretations is that they completely ignore the type of literature that we are dealing with.  Ezekiel is prophetic literature, which heavily utilizes Hebrew poetry, imagery, figurative language, and allusions to get their meaning across.  In chapter 31:8-9, Ezekiel tells us that Assyria was a tree in the garden of God.  I am pretty sure this is figurative since the nation of Assyria was not a tree.  In 29:3, he calls the Pharaoh, king of Egypt, a “great dragon”.  Describing the king of Tyre as a cherub is figurative language to help the reader see that God gave the king a privileged position of power just like a cherub.  The garden of Eden language also points to the blessing God gave the king in Tyre and his kingship.  However, the pride of the king will bring his downfall as verse 17 says “I exposed you before kings”.

Still waiting for the music deal?  In verse 13, Ezekiel describes the ornate dress and opulent jewels adorning the king.  In the list is “in gold were your settings and your engravings.”  Most translations put a footnote by “engravings” and say that the meaning of the Hebrew word is unclear.  When they translated the King James, they gave it their best guess as “tabrets and pipes”, thinking that musical instruments were being described.  The truth is that scholars really don’t know what these Hebrew words are.  So there you are.  In a passage that doesn’t seem to be talking about Satan at all, using Hebrew words that even scholars admit have unknown meaning, we have the whole teaching about Satan being music minister in heaven.

Normally, I try to stay inductive and give options of interpretation.  You have to think for yourself.  But with this urban legend about Satan, I can only offer one humble conclusion:  lame.  The truth is that the Old Testament only mentions Satan in Genesis 3, Job 1 – 3, 1 Chronicles 21, and Zechariah 3.  That’s all, and none of them mention his origin or describe his fall in any detail.  They just tell us that he is a liar, deceiver, accuser, and all around bad angel who tries to bring man down with him.  That simply is not enough detail for us, so we choose to listen to urban legends rather than study the Bible for ourselves.  The whole time, Satan is laughing himself silly.  Would he rather be just a rebellious angel who can only do what God allows him to, has to take the form of lowly snakes, and gets rebuked by God OR would he rather be a beautiful cherub, the music minister of heaven, ascending to the throne of God, and basically an equal with God?

I end this post with the picture in Revelation 12.  God doesn’t even come and fight Satan himself.  Satan is already defeated by Jesus at the cross, and God simply sends Michael and a few angels to toss him out on his rear.  Clean up on aisle 7!

The young woman was quite passionate and convincing as she told her story.  On a missions outreach, several team members had been plagued with bad dreams.  They decided it must be spiritual warfare, so they had a prayer time to ask God to reveal what was happening in the spiritual realm.  While one was praying, she was led to a picture that was in the room.  Someone said that God had revealed to them that the picture was cursed, and had demonic power attached to it.  They immediately took the picture out of the house, and the nightmares stopped that night.  Her conclusion then was that stuff, or objects, can be “cursed”, and need to be dealt with at times in spiritual warfare.

By now you know the routine of this blog.  Here is the point where I turn to you the audience and ask, “Is this principle or teaching in the Bible?”  Should we go through our whole house or apartment and ask God to reveal of any of it is cursed and needs to be disposed of?  Thankfully, Paul deals with this issue in detail in the New Testament because many of the new believers were converts from idolatry and occult like practices.  An issue that consistently came up in the New Testament church was meat sacrificed to idols.  Many meat markets either got their meat directly from pagan temples, or were actually right in the temple itself!  With all the sacrifices being offered to the gods, it was a big source of revenue for the temples.  Famous restaurants in these Greco Roman towns were also frequently located near or in temples, and served meat that had been sacrificed to false gods.  Some people had just stopped eating meat all together to avoid spiritual contamination.

Both 1 Corinthians 10:23-33 and Romans 14:1-4 contains Paul’s solution and teaching on this.  This should be a perfect example to look at the answer our question.  If any objects should be cursed and demonically tainted, it should be all the meat that was offered in pagan temples.  These sacrifices were accompanied often by services which included ritual sex with cult prostitutes, magical incantations, and “feeding” of the idol itself.  Paul makes it quite clear what is happening in these services in 1 Cor. 10:20, “that what pagans sacrifice they offer to demons and not to God. I do not want you to be participants with demons.”  So, if the young woman’s story is true, Paul should tell all the church to throw out and avoid this meat so as to avoid spiritual consequences.

Paul’s statement on the meat however comes out in 1 Corinthians 10:19, “What do I imply then? That food offered to idols is anything, or that an idol is anything? No…”, 1 Corinthians 10:25-26, “Eat whatever is sold in the meat market without raising any question on the ground of conscience. For “the earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof.”; and Romans 14:6, “The one who eats, eats in honor of the Lord, since he gives thanks to God, while the one who abstains, abstains in honor of the Lord and gives thanks to God.”  Paul makes it clear to me that the object itself has no curse or spiritual reason to avoid it.  Idols are “nothing” to Paul, and food is just food.  The main issue to Paul is if their actions will cause harm to the faith of their “weaker brother”, or if they feel they can just go to the temple or a temple restaurant and eat the food there as services are going on around them.

Paul says stay out of temple services because it is going back to their old life and opening them up to the demons present in the temples.  He says eat the meat in the market because there is no danger of spiritual taint, as long as you aren’t harming the faith of others.  If you are over a Christian’s house, think about where their faith is at, and don’t put your rights above their relationship with God (a much bigger teaching!).

I feel like a broken record in this series of posts on spiritual warfare.  The young woman who told me the story definitely didn’t agree with what I told her from the Bible.  For her, because she had “experienced” this, then it must be true.  She interpreted the Bible through the lens of what she had lived through.  Sound Biblical interpretation starts with the Bible though, and through it we must interpret what we see around us.  The picture in her story had no demonic power attached to it that was causing nightmares.  I believe it was their focused time of prayer that effected the change, reestablishing their faith in the power of Christ, and asking God to do the spiritual battle for them.  Fear was gone, and with it was the devil’s power.  Having said all this, I would probably go ahead and burn that Ouija board, old Dungeons and Dragons game, and voodoo dolls you have been keeping around until your next garage sale.

Almost everyone knows the story of Noah and the flood, even though a horrific, world ending event has been turned into a cute  children’s story.  What most people don’t know, however, is the gross and odd story about Noah and his son Ham.  Noah gets way too drunk, and passes out naked in his tent (try to make baby crib bumpers out of that!).  His son Ham enters and “sees his father’s nakedness” in Genesis 9:22, which is a Hebrew phrase often used for sex (see Leviticus 18:6ff).  The story gets even more tragic, because when Noah wakes up and understands what his son did, he curses Ham’s son Canaan in 9:25, “Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be to his brothers.”  The descendants of Ham end up being idolatrous enemies of Israel (Canaan, Egypt, Babylon, Assyria).

This has led some to build a teaching called “generational curses”, which they describe as a spiritual, demonic curse that passes down from father to son in the generational line.  It is used to explain the stronghold of sin on an individual or nation, and usually then proscribes some sort of deliverance or breaking of the curse as necessary for freedom.  A person may be completely unaware of generational curses that have been passed down to them, and so spiritual discernment must be used to identify and break them.  Is there deep sin or spiritual oppression in your life or people group?  It could be a generational curse then.

Is this what Genesis 9 is teaching us?  are there other passages to back this up?  First of all, we must deal with Genesis 9.  First, it is important to note that it is Noah, not God, who places the curse on his grandson.  We have no proof here that God backed up Noah’s curse, or that there is a spiritual force at work.  Second, though these nations do end up idolatrous and evil, there are stories of individuals from these nations becoming part of God’s people (Egyptians in Exodus 12:38, Rahab the Canaanite in Joshua  6:25, Assyrians who repented in Jonah 3 and 4).  This could be the beginning of seeing what I would call generational sin, which is the anti God worldview and immorality that can be and is passed on from one generation to another.  Remember, unbelievers are open to demonic possession, and sin opens the door wide, so this generational sin would go hand and hand with demonic activity.  That doesn’t follow then that these demons or spiritual curses are “passed down” automatically from father to son.

A second verse that I have seen to support generational curses is Exodus 20:5-6, “for I the Lord your God am a jealous God,visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.”  The first part of the verse is focused on where God “visits the iniquity/sin” to the third or fourth generation.  Note that God says “visits the sin” and not “spiritually curses”.  “Visiting the sin” would fit with the generational sin explanation I just gave.  The main problem I have with interpreting this verse as speaking of curses, is that it ignores the second part of the verse.  God says He blesses to the 1,000th generation.  So if you take this literally, and speaking of curses, the opposite is true as well.  As long as you have someone righteous in your line, then you are blessed for 1,000 generations!  Who would worry about curses then?

It is important to remember a foundational principle about how God judges.  In Ezekiel 18:20, God rebukes the victum mentality of the Israelites by saying, “The soul who sins shall die. The son shall not suffer for the iniquity of the father, nor the father suffer for the iniquity of the son.”  He had already made this clear in the law in Deuteronomy 24:16, “Fathers shall not be put to death because of their children, nor shall children be put to death because of their fathers. Each one shall be put to death for his own sin.”  Generational curses would seem to contradict the way that God judges and deals with individuals.

Even if we were to allow for generational curses, we would still have to ask whether Christians can have generational curses or not.  Galatians 3:13 answers this emphatically, “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree”.  Jesus took on the curse for us on the cross, and broke its power over us forever!  Once again, fear has no place in the life of a believer.  Of course, generational sin must still be dealt with as Christians.  Sins that have been taught and passed down from our parents and culture are not broken easily.  They do have spiritual repercussions as we discussed earlier.  But, what God has blessed, no one can curse! (Genesis 12:1-4).  Don’t make Balaam’s mistake!

I love those type of videos that show how unity, intercession, and prayer change whole communities.  I could watch them again and again.  Seeing football stadiums full of believers praying and interceding for their city and nation has me grabbing the tissues every time.  However, it seems like many of them include Christians stating that they believe taking down “territorial spirits” was part of the spiritual warfare necessary to kick off the revival.  They discuss the long meetings they had, asking God to reveal these spirits, so they could be bound, broken, or cast down.  Only once that demon was removed, could true transformation begin.

The real question is, all these amazing personal stories aside, is there any Scriptural basis for territorial spirits and this step of warfare?  The main passage I have seen used in support of this teaching is in Daniel 10.  Daniel is praying and interceding for the Jews, fasting for over three weeks straight.  Suddenly, he is visited by a divine being and receives a powerful vision.  Some argue whether this is an angel or a theophany.  It would seem to be an angel, as he later says that the “Prince of Persia withstood me” and he had to have help from Michael.  I don’t think God (or Jesus if this was a Christophany) need any help from another angel to defeat anything.  The angel then proceeds to reveal to Daniel the battles that will take place between two parts of the Greek Empire over the land of Israel. The main point to Daniel is that though empires will battle, rise and fall, God’s kingdom will remain and He will save and protect His people.

Who is the “Prince of Persia”, and who is the “Prince of Greece” that the angel must go and fight later?  Since Michael and the one speaking are clearly angels (see Jude 1:9 and Rev. 12:7 for more on Michael), some say it is obvious that the Prince of Greece and Persia are angels as well.  Since they are fighting God’s angels, they must be fallen angels that we call demons.  First, it is not absolute that these two figures are demons at all.  Throughout Daniel, God reveals how He is working among the human kings of the earth; for example, chapter 4 Nebuchadnezzar “wrestles” with God and ends up mooing like a cow until he humbles himself.  In chapter 6, Belteshazzar blasphemes against God, and is judged that very night.  It is very possible that the Prince of Persia and Greece are referring to the actual kings (such as Cyrus and Alexander) that God will use to bring about His own plan.

Second, even if we say that these two are demons, the whole teaching of territorial spirits does not follow.  It is God’s angels who are fighting against these demons, not Daniel.  Daniel is only shown what is taking place in the spiritual realm, he is not asked to “join in” and help them battle these princes.  Also, since nothing much is said about them, it is not wise to build a whole teaching that whole nations, cities, or territories have demons that rule over them and their power must be broken before revival can begin.  The main point of this passage is that God hears the intercession of His people, He is in control of kings and empires no matter what it looks like, and God will ultimately save and protect His people.  The spiritual warfare is shown to Daniel so that he understands that there is so much going on in the spiritual realm that he is clueless about.  God sends His angels to fight on our behalf!

The other passage I have seen used for this teaching is Deuteronomy 32:8-9.  The context of this passage is the prophetic song of Moses which lays out Israel’s rebellion against God, their judgment, and God’s eventual vindication of His people.  In verses 8 and 9, God is wanting Israel to see that although He created all nations, He gave Israel a special place and blessing.  In talking about the other nations, God says, “When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance, when he divided mankind he fixed the borders of the peoples according to the number of the sons of Israel.”  I put that phrase in bold because in the Septuagint (Greek OT) and the Dead Sea Scrolls it reads “sons of God” instead of “Israel” as in the Masoretic text (Hebrew text that is foundation of our OT).   Some say that sons of God is the most attested and should be used (ESV does).

What does this have to do with territorial spirits???  Sons of God is a phrase used in the OT to talk about angels (see Job 1:6).  If “sons of God” is the correct reading, some say that this shows that God established nations according to the number of angels.  Some angels rebelled with Satan, thereby becoming demons.  The position God gave them over a nation or territory was turned to evil.  The first problem is that Genesis 6 also uses this phrase “sons of God”, and there is argument whether it is referring to angels or the godly line of Seth (men).  The next problem is that there is manuscript disagreement, and it is always dangerous to build a teaching based on one disputed passage.  Finally, even if this was about angels, there is no instruction for Israel to “battle” against these demons, nor is there is evidence that these angels were ones who rebelled against God.

The bottom line is that the answer to the question, “are there territorial spirits?” is yes and no.  Yes, because demons can only be in one place at a time.  They are not God having the power of omnipresence.  As in the story of Legion, the demons were in the man, the pigs, and then somewhere else (the pit?).  In that sense, a demon is in a certain place or territory.  The answer is no in that the complex teaching that has evolved about fighting territorial spirits simply doesn’t have the backing in Scripture.  As we discussed before, our experience or interviews with demons are not a reliable enough source to base doctrine on.

The warning I leave you with is that the teaching of territorial spirits does have a lot of backing, the problem is that it is from idolatrous religions and animism.  God is constantly reminding Israel in the OT, that He is not a territorial god like the false gods of the pagan nations (see Ezekiel 1 for a beautiful picture of this).  The thing that worries me is that this teaching seems to give more power to demons and creates possible fear and glory for Satan that he doesn’t deserve.  Satan would love for us to think that there is complicated process of steps we have to do to defeat him.  It is just way too easy to cast out demons in Jesus name and preach the Gospel.

I remember the first year that I led a Bible school, a student asked to meet with me before the school started.  She proceeded to tell me that she would need a room to herself in the dorm.  I stifled a laugh, thinking, “Anything else you would like?  Your own personal fitness trainer?  How about a limo and driver?”.  Instead, I decided to humor her and see where this went, so I asked why she needed her own room.  She told me that her past roommates consistently complained about her, because she would wake up screaming in the night.  As a child, she grew up in a family who worshiped idols and false gods.  She had been dedicated to the goddess of her town, and that demon came and controlled her in her sleep.  She was a Christian, but was convinced that she was powerless to stop the demon due to her past.

First of all, I was glad I didn’t laugh or offer some sarcastic response.  Boy, would I have felt bad!  Second, my immediate thought was that Christians can’t be “possessed” or controlled by a demon.  I had never encountered something like this though, and went back to the Bible to research this and meet again with this woman.  Several passages stood out to me in this, and confirmed my initial reaction.  The word “possessed” or “oppressed” are not found in the Greek.  The phrase that is translated this way often is “he/she has a demon/unclean spirit”.  The Greek for “has/have” does indicate ownership or possession, so that is where we get the word we use in English to describe this state.

In Matthew 12:43-45 (also Luke 11:24-26), Jesus describes what happens in a person once a demon is cast out.  He says that the demon searches around for a new place to stay (waterless places refers to the Jewish belief that demons couldn’t travel through water), and will often decide to return to its original host.  Upon return, the demon often discovers, “And when it comes, it finds the house empty, swept, and put in order. Then it goes and brings with it seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they enter and dwell there, and the last state of that person is worse than the first. So also will it be with this evil generation.”  Since this teaching is included in two Gospels, it must contain an important lesson for us.

I believe the lesson is that once a demon is cast out of an unbeliever, if they don’t receive Jesus and become filled with the Holy Spirit, the demon can just come back and take possession of that person again.  Without the Holy Spirit, the unbeliever is just as vulnerable to demon possession as he was before.  The disciples (and us) were supposed to understand that casting out demons is only the first step in the process.  It must be followed up with leading that person to Christ.  Without the “seal of the Holy Spirit”, they are still open to attack from the “prince of the power of the air”.  If this is the correct interpretation, the reverse is true, that once a person accepts Jesus, he is NO LONGER vulnerable to demon possession.

Romans 8:31-39 also speak to this protection we have in Christ, “No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”  Paul is convinced that no spiritual power, good or evil, can separate us from the love of God.  Paul hammers this home in Colossians 2:9-10, “For in him(Jesus) the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have been filled in him, who is the head of all rule and authority.”  If Christians can be possessed, then Christ’ and the Holy Spirit’s power is NOT ENOUGH to protect us against demons.  That has no basis in Scripture whatsoever.

So, how do I explain what was happening with this woman?  Only God knows truly what was happening in the spiritual realm, but I could only come to several conclusions from the Bible.  Through a lack of knowledge in the Bible, she had come to the wrong conclusion about demon’s power, and it was leading her through fear to give power to the demon.  In addition, she may have been suffering from childhood events that had not been fully dealt with through counseling and the Holy Spirit.  I didn’t feel that the last option was the case: that she had never had the demon cast out, so she wasn’t a Christian at all yet.

Satan would love for us Christians to all be in fear and think that he or demons can control and own us.  That way, he can bind us in sin and fear, and instead of leading others to Christ, we spend our lives on the sidelines.  For many of us, the enemy uses our shame and guilt over past and present sins to lead us to believe that we deserve to be afflicted by demons.  The truth is that we do deserve to be afflicted, but God’s grace has set us free.  Galatians 5:1 says it best, “For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.”  The house was swept clean, and now Jesus is living in that house.  No demons allowed!