ANGELS & DEMONS

 

I read Dan Brown’s novel ‘Angels & Demons’ hoping to learn two things: How to write a bestselling novel and what he had to say about angels and demons. I may have learned a little about the former from him but very little about the latter! Mind you, Brown is out to entertain not educate. Angels and demons: what are they? Well, Materialists tell us not to bother looking because they don’t exist. But according to the Bible they are very much in existence. So what should I believe? Books that tell me nothing about these things or the Book that tells me everything I need to know? The Word of God is proof enough to me for the existence of angels and demons. If you want more proof than that then you’ll have to take it up with the triune God!

            Angels are spirit-beings mentioned early in the Bible. When God ejected Adam and Eve from the Garden ‘He placed cherubim at the east of the Garden of Eden, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to guard the way to the tree of life’ Genesis 3:24. Cherubim are a type of angel. The ejection from the Garden was the result of Eve being deceived by a talking serpent and Adam covenanting with him, i.e., Satan. Satan is a fallen angel.

Notice that God is able to cast out Satan. The Lord, speaking of the exalted position of the King of Tyre, likens that king to Satan, ‘You were in Eden, the garden of God … you were the anointed cherub who covers … you sinned … therefore I cast you as a profane thing out of the mountain of God’ Ezekiel 28:13-16. Again, ‘So the great dragon was cast out, that serpent of old, called the Devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world; he was cast to earth, and his angels were cast out with him’ Revelation 12:9. And notice the authority that God has over Satan and his demons, ‘And the angels who did not keep their proper domain, but left their own abode, He has reserved in everlasting chains under darkness for the judgment of the great day’ Jude 1:6.

Demons are angels who were cast out of heaven along with Satan. All were created good, but some, perhaps a third, like Adam in the Garden joined Satan in his rebellion against God. And just as they were ejected from Heaven, so Adam was ejected from the Garden. Heaven and the Garden are intimately connected. Adam was to tend and keep (or guard) the Garden. Therefore Adam, like Satan the covering cherub, was supposed to cover the Garden against intruders (such as Satan!)

The new Adam, the God-man Jesus Christ, demonstrated His divinity by casting out demons. A legion of them asked His permission to enter a herd of pigs! Demons indwelling a herd of swine helps us to understand how Satan was able to speak through a serpent.

The good news is that Jesus is the Seed of the woman that was coming to crush the serpent’s head as promised in Genesis 3:15. By His cross and resurrection He has tied up the strongman and is now plundering his house, i.e., He is setting the captives free by the proclamation of His Gospel.

Angels? ‘Are they not all ministering spirits sent forth to minister for those who will inherit salvation?’ Hebrews 1:14. Dear reader, may you be an inheritor of salvation and have angels as friends