All right, today we want to look at the angels and the devils. And obviously we'll just be covering this lightly because there's so much that could be said. Hopefully you'll buttress it with your readings. Angels, their creation, and Satan and the fall are usually placed in anthropology. Some place it here. I determined that if we had time left in this class, we'd try to cover it here. There's a lot to cover in anthropology as well. But it could be placed in either section, really, particularly the fall, which we will do in anthropology. Angels are created beings and so it's perfectly proper to place it here as well. So don't get alarmed at where we put it, that's not the important point. The bigger point today is that we have a right understanding of the angels and of the devils, that we don't over exaggerate them and that we don't minimize them. That's the tendency today. If you walk into a Christian bookstore, you'll see a lot of books on angels. You'll see that the whole creation and ministry of angels is maximized. Or else sometimes people will minimize it to the point they say, well, the devils, that's just some part of primitive mythology. And supposed Christians walk on as if the devils are no challenge, nothing to worry about, and they poo-poo Satan. Well, scripture teaches us that God created some very intelligent, moral, high creatures known as angels. And yet those angels are not like men, even though we too were created high and moral and intelligent. But we were created as God's image bearer, and that the angels do not have. Nevertheless, they're a very lofty part of God's creation. Now what about the biblical term for angel? Well, it's an anglicizing of the Greek word, angelos, which in turn translates to Hebrew, malak, and both of these words mean messenger. But the word messenger can mean different things in scriptures, different scriptures. Often when we see the word angel, we think of the angels in heaven. But that's not always the case in the Bible. An angel or a messenger can refer, first of all, to an ordinary messenger, as in Job 1, verse 14, when the messengers, you remember, came to Job to give him bad news. They were called malak. Or Luke 11, 52. Prophets were sometimes designated by the word malak. Isaiah 43, 19. And on occasion, so were priests. Malachi 2, verse 7. If you get ordained into the ministry, you might be interested to know that sometimes in the New Testament, ministers were called angels. So if your wife ever calls you an angel, don't rebuke her right away. It's a biblical concept after you're ordained. I tell my wife once in a while that she's half angelic because she's so sweet to me, but she doesn't go for that either. Revelation 1, verse 20. Then, too, the impersonal theophany, the impersonal theophany of the pillar of cloud was called the angel of the Lord in Exodus 14, verse 19. And more importantly and more commonly, the second person of the Trinity is called the angel of the Lord's presence in Isaiah 63, verse 9, and the angel of the covenant in Malachi 3, verse 1. So when you read the word angel, you need to pause and ask yourself, is this one of these minority uses? Or is it indeed the preponderant majority use of scripture, which does refer to the angels in heaven? A. A. Hodge summarizes in his outlines of theology quite helpfully this way. Good angels are designated in scripture as to their nature, dignity, and power as spirits, thrones, dominions, principalities, powers, mites, sons of God, mighty angels, holy angels, elect angels. So there's a diversity of names here. And sometimes you don't know when you, on a first reading, you've actually got to examine the context and say, well, what is the author speaking about here? Well, so much then for the biblical term, but what really is the nature of angels? Let's move to number three on the outline, the nature of angels. Well, the first thing we need to do is distinguish angels from God himself. God is uncreated. The angels are created. And sometimes when it comes to the devil side of the equation, people forget that and you often find people sort of pitting God and angels on a parallel, or devils on a parallel line. which of course lends itself to the error of two gods in the world, one good god and one evil god. And of course that is totally unbiblical. The devil is a defeated foe. The devil is not God. The devil is no equal to the Almighty. The devil is mighty, but God is almighty. The devil is a creature, but God is God. Now secondly, we might say here that in terms of the creation of the angels, there's not a great deal about it in the Bible. We do read in Psalm 148, verses two and five, Praise ye him, all his angels. Praise ye him, all his hosts. Let them praise the name of the Lord, for he commanded and they were created. It's also confirmed in Colossians 1.16 that they are said to have their dwelling place in heaven around the throne of God. So we can conclude that the angels must be spiritual beings, probably created on the first day. There's a lot of arguments about that. I won't go into that. They're created, therefore, without flesh and bones. Luke 24, 39. They do not marry. Matthew 22, 30. They're invisible. Colossians 1, 16. and they can be present in large numbers in small spaces. Luke 8 verse 30. Another thing we can say about the nature of angels is that they're rational and moral creatures in addition to being spiritual. Some passages, like Matthew 24, 36, explicitly represent them as rational. Not omniscient. That's, again, only Almighty God. But having a lot of knowledge, in fact, superior to our knowledge in some ways, it appears to be. Now the unfallen angels have never suffered the noetic effects of sin that we now live under. And of course that too is an asset for their knowledge. Francis Turretin classifies the angelic knowledge into four categories, natural, revealed, supernatural, and experimental. It's actually interesting that other theologians have very different classifications, and most of them don't classify angelic knowledge at all. Compare Turretin just for a moment with Dabney. Dabney says the knowledge of angels is con-created, acquired and revealed. The point I think that everyone is making is that, though they might have different categories, the angels know a lot. In Daniel and in Revelation, They actually appear as men's teachers. Then two, the angels are responsible creatures. They're rewarded for obedience. They're punished for disobedience. Matthew 25, 31. in John 8.44. They're immortal, not subject to death. Even the fallen angels won't cease to exist in hell. It appears from scripture that all of the angels were created good, and that must actually necessarily be the case because God can't create evil. But it's also implied in Genesis 2, verse 1, in John 8, verse 44, and in Jude as well. So those who remain in their original state are called elect angels. And most Reformed theologians would argue that since these elect angels have established a pattern of obedience, that they're in a state where they can no longer fall, that God in some way has tested them and they're established. And hence they can now be called angels of light. 2 Corinthians 11.14. Angels 2 Corinthians 11, 14. Also angels who are always before the face of God. Matthew 18, verse 10. And who are always doing the will of God. Matthew 6, verse 10. Well, that's a bit about the nature of angels. Let's look now at their orders. Here we get into a bit more speculation. I'll just give you a summary of what theologians are saying about this and by no means take this as definitive. There's still a lot of debate on this issue. One reason I suppose there's debate about the order or there's talk about different orders of angels is because of the biblical diversity of vocabulary. describing angels and the magnitude of the number of angels. And you see 10,000 times 10,000, your brain just kind of wants to categorize them in sections, there's just so many of them. But we're encouraged to think along those lines a bit by scripture itself when we see different names. And it makes us think Heaven must be organized in terms of orchestration of tasks, and maybe certain angels tend to do certain tasks more than others, and certainly God, who's got an orderly economy within himself, must have an orderly economy in the way he runs heaven. So there's some theological rationale for having orders of angels. The Bible doesn't specifically say, here are three or four groups. So no one really knows, in an airtight way, exactly how many orders there are and how their work overlaps. But we can piece things together a bit and conclude there are, or they do appear to be, different orders of angels. First, there are the cherubim, Genesis 3, 24. which guard the garden against intrusion of sinful men. Now, it's the same cherubim that are portrayed as being in the Holy of Holies, guarding the mercy seat and gazing down upon it in awe. Hebrews 9 verse 5. In Ezekiel, they're actually associated with the chariot throne of God. And in Revelation 4, they appear before the throne of God. So when you bring these things together, you find two common denominators. Number one is the cherubim seem to have a special place of serving around the very throne of God. Cherubim and throne of God, as it were, belong together. And number two, God appears to send them at times on special missions. So occasionally sends them on special missions to this earth. And of course the second group that's quite distinct is the Seraphim. They are represented in human form as well. But in Isaiah 6, they're said to have six wings. Isaiah 6 is really the only specific reference to Seraphim. So that leads some theologians to say, well, They, too, have a place of honor, like the cherubim. They, too, are around the throne of God. But because of the exaltedness of the Isaiah 6 passage and the way they cover their faces with their wings and so on, could it be possible that these seraphim are The real nobility among the angels, and they're very, very close to God's own presence, as it were. Louis Burkhoff calls them the nobles among the angels. While the cherubim, he writes, guard the holiness of God, these serve the purpose of reconciliation, thus prepare men for the proper approach to God. Well, see, here I think you're starting to get into speculation because there's so little evidence of that in Isaiah 6, but that's what the theme is about, how to come in God's presence. So I guess Berghoff concludes on that slender evidence that there's this distinction, cherubim guarding the holiness of God and seraphim helping men approach to God. But to me, I think you have to be careful here. Now thirdly, there are some other specific angels that are singled out. It's hard to know how to categorize them, isn't it? Are they cherubim? Are they seraphim? Or are they a special category? Do they perhaps belong to the seven angels that stand before the throne of God in Revelation 8? Or is the number seven there symbolic? And there really aren't seven distinct angels. I'm thinking, of course, of two angels in particular, Gabriel and Michael. Gabriel is mentioned twice in Daniel, or appears twice in Daniel. In Luke 1, he also appears twice. And he seems to have a very special task of mediating and interpreting the revelation of God for very special encounters that always seem connected to the coming of the Messiah. Now, Michael is mentioned twice in the Bible. I'm sorry, four times in the Bible. Twice in Daniel, once in Jude, and once in Revelation. Now, he is called the archangel in Jude, verse 9. So that may indicate another order of angels, a superior order of angels that is somehow above the cherubim and the seraphim, a group that occupies, you might say, the right hand, the left hand of the throne of God. Michael appears to have as his main task to fight the battles of the Lord against his enemies. My dad has a footnote here that scholars don't seem to know whether Gabriel, because we have no concrete evidence, whether Gabriel was an archangel or not. He may well have been. It kind of fit into the categorization system kind of nicely if you say that the angels that are given personal names are archangels and they're the highest, but there's not any concrete proof for that. It could very well be, but we don't know. So you can see there's a bit of speculation in this whole area. There's other names for angels that generally are regarded by theologians as being synonymous with angels or just being different descriptions of them, not necessarily indicating different orders. So they're called sometimes thrones, they can be called dominions, they can be called principalities and powers. Now, a more important subject is their service, number five, their service. And there's a lot that could be said here, but I'll try to make it brief, do it in a summary fashion. Birkhoff describes their service. He divides it into ordinary and extraordinary. That might be helpful. The ordinary service consists of their praising God night and day. There's lots of texts here, Job 38, verse 7, Revelation 5, 11. They're seen as speaking and singing the praises of God in heaven, but also on earth, particularly, of course, at the birth of Christ. We know, too, that they rejoice and praise God over the conversion of sinners. Luke 15, verse 10. We know that part of their ordinary work is also to watch over believers. Psalm 34, verse 7 and Psalm 91, verse 11. And we're told that they protect the little ones. Matthew 18, verse 10. And then something that we don't often realize, or at least not very concretely in our circles, is their ordinary service is also present in corporate official worship services in the church. 1 Corinthians 11, verse 10. And 1 Timothy 5, verse 21. Now what about extraordinary service? Well, God seems to have used them in extraordinary ways ever since the fall. I like what Burkoff has to say about this. They often mediate the special revelations of God, communicate blessings to his people, and execute judgments upon his enemies. This extraordinary service is prominent in the great turning points in the economy of salvation. such as in the days of the patriarchs, or at the time of the giving of the law, the period of exile and restoration, and at the birth, resurrection, and ascension of our Lord. You might want to check Burke off there, page 148, he's got a pretty good summary. All right, what about, finally, guardian angels? If the role of protection of God's people is ordinary, and once in a while angels are involved in extraordinary service, do we believe in guardian angels? Well, the early Christian fathers tended to believe in guardian angels. That is, you understand what a guardian angel is, that one particular angel. is assigned to protect every single believer. Well, that position was solidified early on in the Roman Catholic Church, and it's continued until today. Here's a 1956 translation of Dutch Roman Catholics called, The Handbook of the Catholic Faith. It says this, we are assisted in our struggle against evil by our guardian angel. Each of us has an angel who has particular charge of us throughout life. This angel, called our guardian angel, protects us in both soul and body. He encourages us to live a purposeful and persevering life guided by the will and law of God. He makes use of our instinct of self-preservation to warn us of danger, and he shares his wisdom with us when our own fails us. He's also a messenger between God and us, offering up prayers and requests for us. Well, to a lot of people, when you read this, this sounds rather comforting. Kind of nice to know that I have a guardian angel right here wherever I go. And he's praying for me, and he's doing all these other things for me. But Reformed theology sees a problem. Isn't the Roman Catholic Church just putting one more kind of mediator type figure between God and you? So you've got now, you've got the prayers of the saints, you've got Mary you can go to, and now you've got all these angels, and particularly a guardian angel, and the whole system gets very cumbersome, you see. And I remember when I was at Westminster Seminary, Clare Davis drew a little chart on the board. You know, the simplicity of the Reformed system. Here's God. Here's Christ. Here's a sinner. There's one mediator between God and man, Christ Jesus, the righteous. And then, of course, you get the Roman Catholic system. You get Mary in here, and the saints, and the guardian angel, and all these are more, well, figures that, of course, Christ is human as well, in the sense that he became man, but still he's also God, you see, and that's awesome to approach to him, and so you get these lesser mediators to help you get to the small of them, to help you to get to a kind of bigger mediator, and finally you get to God. It becomes a very, very complex system. So the reformed branch of theology has always rejected the idea of a guardian angel. B.B. Warfield says that the Roman Catholic interpretation of the two texts that they put forward for the doctrine, Matthew 18, verse 10, and Acts 12, 15, he says of these texts, the real difficulty in explaining these passages by the aid of the notion of guardian angels is that this notion does not in the least fit their requirements. Why should a guardian angel be except with his ward? That is the essential idea of a guardian angel. He's supposed to be in unbroken attendance upon the saint committed to his charge. Neither in Matthew 18 or in Acts 12 are the angels spoken of found with their wards, but they are found distinctly elsewhere. Actually, Warfield digs deeper into this. You can find it in his selected shorter writings, if you're interested, Volume 1. It's somewhere around the 250s and 260s. After he explores the different possible explanations of Matthew 18 and Acts 12, he takes a rather intriguing position that the word angel in these passages actually doesn't even refer to angels, but refers to the soul of an individual. I'll leave you to sort that out with our friend Warfield. It seems to me that these are problematic texts. I don't know of anyone who's really clear on this. The angels of these little ones and Peter's angel without coming into difficulties. Whenever it's expounded, one comes into difficulty, because we know so little about it. These texts are not easy to handle. But certainly, they don't expressly teach that every believer has a guardian angel. So Warfield concludes that it refers to soul, Because he argues that the idea of disembodied spirits has fewer difficulties to face than the other proposals. Maybe someone, I hope not a lot of people, because I don't think it's worth it to put a lot of people on it, but maybe someone should make a study in the reform camp of this whole concept of guardian angels and come up with something a bit more definitive than has been done to date. Well, those are a few thoughts on the angels, and I want to spend the rest of the time this morning talking about the devils, because here the rubber hits the road in our own battle with Satan, and there's some important things to say here. But let me ask you if you have any questions. Yes? Do you think there's enough evidence, or is it just speculation that Michael the archangel is the pre-incarnate Christ? Yes, I think the Reformed camp is pretty divided on that, as far as I recall from my reading. I tend to think that Michael is one of the very special angels, probably one of the seven from the textual readings I think there is a tendency in Reformed theology, and myself included, we want to so badly see everything in Christological terms that we tend to gravitate that way. And because the expression, the angel of the Lord or the angel of the covenant in the Old Testament often does clearly refer to pre-incarnate Christ, we might be prone to quickly lean in that direction. I don't see concrete evidence that Michael is pre-incarnate. Yes, Marty and then Tiago. Oh, you save such tough questions for the last day of class. The mind is tricky and I would say people don't always think or see reliably when they're in great stress. Imagination can do quite a bit. I probably attribute some of those things to that. But if you said to me, is it impossible to ever happen? Whenever you ask the question, can it possibly be? You almost always end up saying yes, because God is almighty and God can do extraordinary things. What do you do with stories like someone's walking by a certain place and they were going to assault a certain minister and someone else actually witnessed this. This is a true story that there was somebody that was going to assault, but then the person that was going to assault the minister, as the minister walked by, said he saw two people and he didn't dare attack them because there was someone else with him. and then later concluded it must have been an angel because there really was no one else with him. What did he do with that? I don't know. Certainly I would say it's not the norm. It would be a very, very rare exception if someone saw an angel. On the other hand, when you speak to people who've come back from near-death experiences, It's undeniable in my mind, and I've talked to a few people like this, that it's possible to see something, almost like a peek over the wall. I had one lady who said that when her mother died, the very last moment she sat up and said, I hear the angels singing, and just fell back in her pillow and died. And I was by a lady once where she was just in a coma, she was gone, and she's just about ready to pronounce her brain dead actually, and they just thought she was done, this was it, and she just suddenly opened her eyes and she lifted up her hands, and it was just like she saw something, she looked beyond me. What do you make of that? And then you read these books, I mean books by, People who aren't just looking for the extraordinary, they have near-death experiences. Especially God's people, it's not unusual for them to see great light. Not always angels, but a great light. I, for one, am not going to dismiss all that. I think that when the soul leaves the body, it goes directly to God. There can be a flash of a second, as it were, when there's a transition. And God can also leave a testimony behind by that. I would only counsel you not to make too much of such experiences. Some people make a lot of these things and this becomes more important to them than the ordinary conversion experience. And that is absolutely wrong. A little icing on the cake can never take the place of the cake. You've got to have the foundations there. So you can tell how cautious I'm being. I don't want to absolutely say all that stuff is forbidden. I do want to say that there's a certain form of literature that exalts this and that becomes a stuff of books and some of it just doesn't ring true. I had a friend, and I still talk to him. He and his past wife had some very scary experiences, so I guess more of the devil's subject. I think it might have been a little bit of superstition. How many things, especially his wife, would just freak out sometimes you just come running out of the house and say you saw someone in the bathroom, in the mirror or something, and the doctor house is haunted. I guess the same things I said about that would apply to this in many ways. There can be special seasons. in a believer's life where he is peculiarly harassed by Satan and has an acute sense of that. I mean, that's certainly what Martin Luther had. I mean, when Luther threw his inkpot at the devil, that really happened. And he wasn't just throwing his inkpot at the wall because he was angry. He actually felt like the devil was right there in the room with him. I've had two or three times in my ministry where, yeah, I honestly felt something of that. I just can't explain it. It sounds weird, but I can't explain it to you. One time there was a lady who was mentally ill. She started coming to our church, and just the look in her face, you get this haunted look. It's almost... It wasn't long after you met her that you almost feel like she's demon possessed, you know. Very scary, scary look in her face. And she would be parking outside our parsonage door, and then she'd be knocking on the door, and then she'd be wanting to see me, and it was just, it was awful. And then she'd be, we'd leave, and she'd be at the end of, she'd be a half a block away, parked on the side of the road, and I'll tell you, it just overwhelmed me. And it shouldn't have, but I just felt like the devil was at my elbow to destroy me. It was also the time when four ministers were trying to depose me from the ministry, and so all kinds of things were happening in my life. I was just hounded. I was so happy to get away from it all. I went to Fort McLeod for a Sunday. I was so happy to just leave the area. And I got in Fort McLeod. I got in the airport in Calgary and I went to the car to drive down to Fort McLeod. On my way down, it got dark. I'm on a two-lane highway going 65 miles an hour both ways, or 55. And I'm going around a curve, And I'm thinking about all these things, you know, just, Lord, help me, help me. I was just so needy, so needy. And I noticed that on the right side of the road, I mean, the road just dropped straight off down into no man's land. And all of a sudden, there's a car coming right at me in my lane on the other side. Didn't know what to do, but at the last moment, I just, I mean, it was too late to brake or anything. He was right on top of me, came around the corner, coming right at me. I couldn't go to the right. It was just like a reflex. I swung the wheel to the left and went the wrong way past that car. Well, you talk about your heart leaping into your throat. Not just that only, but the reality of Satan's presence at that moment was phenomenal, phenomenal. I just cannot tell you what it was like. About 10 miles later, I had a car come right across the road and almost hit me. I just felt like Satan was out to get me. I finally got to George Fader's house and I just stepped inside the door and I just broke down and wept like a baby. Satan is out to get me, I told him. It was just so real. Now, what do you make of all that? Well, I think there are special seasons when Satan is harassing you. And the beauty of that, as I look back now, is that God is mightier than Satan, and that he protects you even in these very dangerous situations. Yeah, but we're getting to that in the next... I think we're getting to that. Tiago, another quick question. Do you think that the angels were created in the image of God as men or not? Angels created in the image of God? Yeah, in the image of God, just like men. Well, it depends on how you define image. If you mean by image that they're spirits, yes. If you mean by image that they've got rational capacities that are pretty great? Yes. So an image in the wider sense. If you mean image in the narrow sense that you talk about with man, that they create an image of God after knowledge, wisdom, and holiness, it almost seems like they have that too. But at no point in Scripture does God say angels are image bearers. I think there's something special about man, so that when man is redeemed and brought to heaven, even here now because we're sinners in a sense like we're lower than the angels because they're sinless. But I think in heaven, I think we'll have a higher place and the angels will be serving us. Alright, let's spend the rest of the time talking about a very unpopular subject, but a necessary subject, the devils. If you're a true believer, Satan hates you. he hates you because you bear the image of Christ and because you're his peculiar workmanship and you've you've been snatched from his power you've gone AWOL on his army so Satan hates you because Christ is within you and because you love the Lord Jesus Christ whom he hates and Satan wants you back Simon, Simon behold Satan is desiring to have you that he may sift you as wheat. So don't overestimate Satan. He's not a fallen deity. He's not God. But don't underestimate him. He's a very powerful enemy. He's stronger than you are. And you need God and His Word to thwart him. So the battle against Satan is first of all a fierce battle. Life and death are at stake. Dark principalities and powers are under Satan's dominion. Subject to his orders. He's got an aggressive army. He's like the Al Qaeda in a sense. You never know when he's going to strike. He's a terrorist. It's a fierce battle. Secondly, it's a spiritual battle. We don't fight this enemy with guns and tanks or atomic weapons. Paul says we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. Ephesians 6, verse 12. So this battle is not for worldly power or worldly possessions. It aims higher. It's a battle for spiritual realities. Behind our visible enemies of flesh and blood is an army of spiritual, invisible adversaries. And thirdly, this battle is a necessary battle. Remember how many times George Bush would say about people or about America, let's not forget, you know, we're at war. We're at war. At war against terrorism. And people can pretend we're not at war in America. But we are at war. And that's how we ought to see our battle with Satan. A believer's always at war. with Satan, with an enticing world and hopefully with his own flesh as well. And you see, to be in the midst of war and not realize you're at war makes you susceptible to defeat. If you ignore the enemy, you set yourself up for defeat. That's why Paul says, put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil, Ephesians 6, 11. Too many Christians today are paying too little attention to Paul's command. In fact, too many churches are speaking more about disarmament than armament. And too many preachers are promoting universal brotherhood rather than exposing the antithesis between the two opposing kingdoms in this world. So you can't avoid this war. You can't plead pacifism either, or medical deferment. You can't avoid Satan's bullets and bombs. He's out to get you. We must know our adversary. We must know his strategies, his power, his weaknesses. We must know how to withstand him. Well, who is Satan anyway? First, let's take a brief look at him in the Old Testament. His existence is attested to in nine Old Testament books, but he's much more commonly spoken of in the New Testament. Every New Testament writer refers to Satan. Satan is a Hebrew word that means accuser, one who resists. That term is used 19 times in the Old Testament. 14 of them, by the way, in Job 1 and 2. Sometimes it appears that the term Satan is a proper name or a title, maybe of the lead devil. Other times, it seems like it's just a title given to a fallen angel. Sometimes it doesn't include, you see, the definite article before Satan. Ezekiel 28 verses 12 through 19 explains to us, first of all, what Satan was like, verses 12 through 15, before he sinned. I read it to you this morning. He's described as the anointed cherub, was one full of wisdom, morally blameless. He was in the Eden of God, on the holy mountain of God. Donald Barnhouse writes, Satan awoke in the first moment of his existence in full or beauty and power of his exalted position, surrounded by all magnificence which God gave him. He saw himself as above all the hosts in power, wisdom, and beauty. Only at the throne of God did he see more than he himself possessed. So Barnhouse concludes that Satan, before his fall, occupied the role of prime minister for God, ruling possibly over the universe, but certainly over this world. But then, Ezekiel 28, 15 through 19 goes on to tell us that Satan fell from this high position. And the implication here, and in a few other places of scripture, is because of his preoccupation with his own beauty and glory that led him somehow, mysteriously, beyond our comprehension, because this took place in the sinless heaven, have a foolish ambition to unseat the God of glory. And so Satan's sin originated in pride and then grew into self-deception and it ended in rebellious ambition. And that rebellious ambition led him to induce a large number of other angels to join him in opposing God. Revelation 12, verse 4. And God, in response, then threw Satan and all the rebellious angels out of heaven to the earth. Ezekiel 28, 16 and 17. So Satan lost forever his original position as the anointed cherub of God. Now Satan's goal then was to have man as the crown of creation fall in the same way that he fell. So he came in Genesis 3 to tempt And really what he does is he runs through a four-step process here. He puts God's command, first of all, of obedience, God's command of obedience, in a negative light. Yea, hath God said. Genesis 3, verse 1b. Secondly, he then impugns God's motive and character. He says, you won't die. The problem is God doesn't want you to become like Him. And then thirdly, He says that man can become like God. So He's transferring His own goal in heaven to... He wants to put that goal into Eve and into Adam to get them to fall as well. And fourthly, He then makes sin look good. He then makes sin look good. Verse 6, the woman saw that the tree was good for food, etc. Now, there's a whole sermon, of course, in what I just said in the last 90 seconds. The Steps of Satan, taking Eve down the path towards sin, makes a classic sermon on temptation and how Satan still works today, very same way. But, despite Satan's success in getting Adam and Eve to disobey God, and to break covenant with God, and to plunge the entire human race into sin, Satan still remains under God's control throughout the whole Old Testament era. Already in principle, he's a defeated foe. even though Christ hasn't come yet. Luther put it this way, he said, the devil was always God's devil. That is, God had control of him. We see that in the book of Job. Satan had to ask permission. He couldn't go beyond the limits fixed by God. And so Satan's evil campaigns, no matter how well planned, continually fail. Satan's plan with Job failed. Satan's plan with Balaam failed. Calvin put it this way. I love this comment. Satan is so ruled by God's bidding as to be compelled to render God service. Satan is so ruled by God's bidding as to be compelled to render God's service. In other words, God turns Satan's motives on their head. So when Satan tries to destroy Jesus on the cross, that very destruction actually is the salvation of his people. The opposite of what Satan is trying to do. And that still takes place in your life and my life today. The very things that we think will undo us actually strengthen our faith. I just told you, surprisingly to myself, a very personal experience I had with these battles with Satan. What was in that effect of it all is my faith was strengthened. I still remember how I could have easily died in the moment and God protected me wonderfully and that strengthens your faith. Sometimes God allows Satan to do certain things to us. Think of the book of Job. But he oversees it, and he works it together for good. So we'll praise him the more, and we'll be deepened in our spiritual experience. That's why Calvin goes on to say this beautiful statement. Even the devil can sometimes act as a doctor for us. You'd think that went through a while. Even the devil can sometimes act as a doctor for us. That's because, of course, his devices are controlled by God. Now, in the intertestamental period, moving to point three on the outline, there is much more specificity about Satan in the Apocrypha. The Apocrypha refers to Satan as Abelio, as Mastema, and Samael. And he's described as a chief of an army of demons at war against God and his angels. And you read in the book of Jubilees and in the book of 1st Enoch that Satan tempts believers, he attacks believers, he leads devils and unregenerate people against God. So it's interesting that there's an escalation in the writings, even the Apocrypha, about Satan. And that's going to get much more much more so in the New Testament. Now in the New Testament, we learn a lot more than about Satan, as the devil. And that term, diabolos, or devil, means traducer or slanderer. It's used 60 times in the New Testament, 40 times in the Gospels alone. It's interesting that when Christ comes, the devil is more active than any other point. The devil is the slanderer par excellence. He slanders God to man, as he did to Eve, but he also slanders man to God and man to man. The term Satan occurs 34 times in the New Testament. But he's also called many other things. He's called Accuser, he's called Adversary, he's called Apollyon, he's called Beelzebub, he's called Belial, he's called the Dragon, he's called the God of this world, Prince of this world, the Serpent, the Tempter. Now all of these names teach us that Satan is not an impersonal evil force. He possesses all the traits of personality. He's got intellect, 2 Corinthians 11, verse 3. He's got emotion, Revelation 12, 17. And he's got will, 2 Timothy 2, 26. So he's a personal, proud, rebellious, lawless, slanderous, liar, and deceiver, and distorter, and imitator. New Testament reveals him as the ruler of a host of angels, fallen angels. He's got a well-organized army of spiritual agents. Matthew 25, verse 41. Just as there are ranks of the angels in heaven, so it appears that Satan has his ranks. He's like a competent general who gathers his information, carries out his program, throughout this worldwide kingdom of darkness. Satan carries out these evil activities among all kinds of groups of people. He works, of course, among unbelievers in a powerful way. And he works by blinding their minds. He works by preventing them from believing in Christ alone. He works by striving to retain their allegiance to himself. So the Bible speaks of him having children. Children of the devil, 1 John 3, verse 10. Now in some cases, Satan and his demons enter so fully into people and control people so fully that they engage in what's been called demon possession. In fact Luke 8 verse 30 describes a man whose name was called Legion because many devils were entered into him. It seems that prior to Christ's death and resurrection Satan and his demons were permitted to exert powerful, overt attacks upon some people's minds and bodies, particularly during the public ministry of Jesus during those three years. And God permitted that, it appears, so that people might see their need for a deliverer, and that the power of Christ to deliver would be prominently displayed. We know that demon possession could produce blindness, Matthew 12, paralysis, Acts 8, self-destruction, Mark 9. Superhuman strength, Mark 5. Personality splits, Mark 5. Insanity, Luke 8, and so on. But Jesus was able to cure all of these things, showing the great power of Jesus Christ to heal. He's Almighty God. But thirdly, Satan doesn't only work among unbelievers and work, secondly, to the point of demon possession at times, but he also works among believers. Even though he's essentially a defeated foe, he still wages intense war against the followers of Jesus. We do make this distinction, however, that since every believer is indwelt by the Holy Spirit, and belongs to Jesus. Believers cannot, at least not in an abiding way, be demon-possessed. 1 Corinthians 6.19. And John affirms that in 1 John 4.4 by saying that Jesus who is in us is greater than Satan who is in the world. It doesn't mean, however, that a believer can fall badly and that Satan doesn't accuse believers day and night before the throne of God. Fourthly on the outline, Satan also attacks Jesus himself. The conflict between the devil and the seed of the woman And ultimately, thus he being Jesus is unbelievable. It comes center stage through the incarnation of the Word. The devils unleash their strongest fury against our Savior. And immediately, when he's baptized and his public ministry is inaugurated, His sinless humanity is attacked by Satan. Satan takes him for 40 days into the wilderness. It presents him with the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the boastful pride of life, trying to get that sacred humanity under his control. Matthew 4. Satan tempts Jesus to independence, Matthew 4, verses 3 and 4, first temptation, independence, to indulgence, verses 5 through 7, and to idolatry, 8 through 10, independence, indulgence, and idolatry. This underlying goal, you see, is to get Jesus to fall in some way, just as he got Eve and Adam to fall. But of course we know happily that Jesus held his ground and withstood Satan, kept saying, it is written, it is written, it is written, and gave us a pattern of how to resist Satan through the written word of God. And Satan left him for a season. But then, especially near the end of his life, Satan came back with a vengeance, didn't he? In Gethsemane, he unleashed all the powers of hell. Jesus was crawling as a worm and dripping with bloody sweat. At Gabbatha, he was forced to wear a purple robe and a crown of thorns while he was scourged and mocked and slapped and bruised, and that, no doubt, was Satan's doing. But at Golgotha, Psalm 22 says of the Messiah that the bull's obation encompassed him. Every insult was heaped upon him, the brutal soldiers, cruel spectators, a selfish priest, and there he hung in the naked flame of his father's wrath, buffeted by Satan. Until the cry was pressed out of him, the greatest cry ever uttered by human lips, my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Martin Luther once spent a whole morning trying to understand those words, and he said, the truth is incomprehensible. All I know, all I know, though I can't understand how God could forsake God, all I know is that Satan was defeated there on that cross once for all. Hebrews 2.14, through death he, that is Christ, might destroy him that had the power of death, that is the devil. But, also in the New Testament church, Satan goes on to battle. He doesn't easily admit defeat. He continues to bruise the heel of Christ's church in other ways. Now he can't reach Christ directly because Christ is in heaven, but he can try to wreak havoc in the church, in the New Testament church. So he works with Ananias and Sapphira. He tempts Corinthian church members to abandon self-control in sexual matters, 1 Corinthians 7.5. He tempts Paul by inflicting him with a thorn in his flesh. He persecutes believers in Smyrna. His demons serve as agents of apostasy, 1 Timothy 4, 1-3, and so on it goes. In fact, number 5 on the outline, all throughout church history, Satan continues to battle with the church, both within the church and from outside of the church. He sows seeds of corruption and heresy and strife and schism in the invisible church. He institutes waves of persecution, brings the church into suffering. Satan presided over the rise of the Roman Catholic bishopric people system. fostered the growth of superstition regarding the sacraments, encourages introduction of pagan practices into Christian worship, inspires the embracing of false teaching about the Trinity and about the nature of scripture and the person of Christ, and so on and on it goes. And so Satan, working through civil authorities at times, launches waves of trial for the church, and persecution in the time of the Reformation, the Great Awakening, times of revival. 20th century, more Christians died for their faith in all 19 previous centuries combined. Satan is still at work. And yet, today, today, Still working, and yet he's bound. God's sentence in Genesis 3.15 has been executed. Satan can no more deceive the nations. He's been chained. Chained by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The demons still do his bidding. And occasionally, there can still be cases of demon possession, perhaps, particularly reported by missionaries, especially those who introduce the gospel into pagan territory. Fred Leahy concludes that present-day demon possession can be voluntary or involuntary, permanent or spasmodic, Generally, those who get so possessed have personalities that emerge in a kind of double personality. And yet there's a vast difference between the casting out of demons by Jesus and the apostles and present-day exorcism, which is rooted in pagan practices. Leahy writes, pagan exorcisms are simply a trick by which Satan brings people increasingly under his power. The stronger demon and the sorcerer will most certainly expel the demon in a possessed person, but that person is not healed. He's not been delivered from the power of the enemy. The expelled demon can and probably will return. So today we can say that ministers and ordinary believers should not try to be exorcists. grave dangers are involved in dabbling in exorcism. And one such danger is the potential of leading people into unreality and psychosis. Lee concludes that before there can be permanent dispossession of a demon, there must be a spiritual repossession of the victim. Before there can be permanent dispossession, of a demon. It must be a spiritual repossession of the victim. He then goes on to show how that happens only through a spirit-owned ministry of the Word. So today, well, yes, today God's people still battle with Satan. We all know those battles in our own soul. Satan He wants to put blasphemous thoughts into our minds. He wants to whisper that you cannot be a child of God if you've got such thoughts or if you're doing such things. He wants to trip us up every time we sin. He wants us to question the truth of God's promises. He wants to crush our faith. He comes to us as an accuser. He wants to lead us to despair. Or He comes as an angel of light and wants to lead us to presumption. He's always nibbling at our heels. But thanks be to God. The church is safe in Christ. Victory is assured in Christ. Christ has the keys of death and hell and grave in His hand. So what is Satan's future? Well, shortly before Christ returns on the clouds, Satan will be loosed for a season. to launch a mighty onslaught against the church. Revelation 20 says. Christ will then come as victor to bruise fatally Satan's head in the final judgment. Christ will then seize the old serpent and cast him into the bottomless pit of hell prepared for the devil and his angels. And Satan and his fallen angels just dread this judgment, this final judgment. Even when Jesus was here on earth, the demons cowered before him and said, what have we to do with thee? Didst thou come to destroy us before our time? J. Marcellus Kick says, that in Jude 6, where we're told that Christ has reserved everlasting chains for the evil spirits who rebel in heaven, he writes, what a welcome will the devil receive from those whom he's deceived. What curses, what abuses, what reviling, what berating will be heaped upon his head. He'll be surrounded by a lake of curses, hated, despised, rejected throughout all eternity. But what a comfort for us to know that on the Judgment Day, Satan and his seed will be cast out forever. The bruising of his head will become complete. The accuser of the brethren will never accuse us again. There will be no more trouble from the seed of Satan. What a consolation to know that we fight. a principally mortally wounded foe, and one day, mortally wounded in reality forever. So on Judgment Day, the suffering church, the militant church, becomes a triumphant church. Corruption inherits incorruption. Conflict ceases. So, brothers, let's be of good courage. We're on the way to eternal victory with the Living Church of Jesus Christ. Christ's seed will not perish despite all of Satan's efforts. Your victor, Jesus Christ, cannot fail. He cannot forsake the work of his own hands. His cause is sure. So in conclusion, how are we to resist Satan? by fleeing to the intercessor, Jesus Christ, clinging to his promises, leaning hard on him. Second, we are to resist Satan with the word and the promises of God. We are not to bargain with Satan, not to give way to his enticements, but to gird ourselves with the armor of God. To resist Satan, by showing God his own handwriting in his own word, and remembering always that Satan is in chains, and you belong to Christ who is mightier than Satan. You know, Bunyan has this wonderful, wonderful section in Pilgrim's Progress where Christian doesn't dare go forward. He's looking ahead and he sees two lions. He's tempted to go back. It's too much. But then, now he goes forward, sighing, crying, groaning to God. And lo and behold, he sees the lions are chained, and he walks between them. It's beautiful. It's so picturesque of what happens in our lives as believers when we're tempted to run away from God in some area of our lives. Something's too difficult, something's overwhelming. We see all kinds of opposition. fears within and enemies without, and how can we go forward? We can't do it. And then we remember, ah, the lion is chained. We go forward and sure enough, God brings us through the impasse. We look back and see Satan's anger. He's chained through the Lord Jesus Christ. So we keep clinging to the word, keep clinging to God's promises, keep believing, keep going forward, trusting our Savior. And finally, be sober, be vigilant, and hope to the end. Be sober, be vigilant, and hope to the end. Don't be self-confident, but don't be overly fearful either. Don't be proud. Remember Satan. fell through pride. Don't try to live independently from God. Take heed lest ye fall. Let us remind ourselves that life is short and trials are fleeting. Soon we will fly away and we will know the truth of Romans 16.20, the God of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly. Commenting on this verse, Robert Haldane said, there were two victories to be obtained over Satan. By the first, his head was to be bruised under the feet of Jesus Christ. By the second, the rest of his body will be bruised under the feet of believers. Well, let these grand truths help you persevere in fighting Satan by the strength of our Lord Jesus Christ. All right, that concludes my lecture material for this class. Thank you for being such diligent students and taking such good notes and asking such good questions. Any final questions? Yes, Rob. Is there a danger in assigning omnipresence and omniscience to Satan? It seems like we often think about Satan tempting us, but can he really be in all these places at one time, and does he know what's going on in our minds all the time? Very good questions. Yes, I'm using Satan, of course, in this lecture, not just, well, in some ways I'm speaking of him as the lead devil that's orchestrating everything. But in another sense we mean it as just, you know, the devils. And just as there are many, many unfallen angels, so that God has an ample supply to have them cover our needs at all times. So Satan has quite an army. But whether Satan himself can always be present as one individual devil, the answer is no, he's not omnipresent. Just like the angels in heaven. Always when you think of the devils, think of the angels in terms of their nature, because it's still the same nature, just fallen. Do the angels in heaven know the thoughts that are going on in your mind? And I think no, technically no. But given the fact that psychologists tell us that 85% of all communication takes place without verbiage, and that's a pretty high number. I don't think it's really quite that high, but body language speaks. How you spend your free time speaks. It's almost as, you know how, let me say it this way. This is probably the best example. When you've been married for 10, 20, 30 years, think of a couple married 50, 60 years. The husband says, yeah, she hardly has to speak because I already know what she's thinking. He's not inside of her mind, but he's got such familiarity with her. He's got a good feeling of what she's thinking. And I think we can say that about Satan, that he's been an astute observer of human nature for 6,000 plus years. He knows what human nature's like, and he knows, or the various devils, I would say, know personalities better than we might think. So, and you've experienced that, haven't you, that the very bosom sin that troubles you the most Doesn't it seem like sometimes Satan or the devils, I should say the devils, know that and they're just constantly trying to trip you up by presenting that temptation in your way. But when people say Satan knows all your thoughts as if he's right inside your mind and controlling you, I don't think that's true. I'm not sure that's even true of an unbeliever. Certainly not true of a believer because he's controlled by the Holy Spirit. So, that's why Martin Luther, for example, said, I always want to pray out loud because I want even Satan to know what I'm praying. You know, if Satan knew his thoughts, he wouldn't need to say that. So, the difficult question then arises, if Satan does not know our thoughts, can he somehow interject blasphemous thoughts into our mind? That's a bit of a different question. Exactly how that works is a difficult problem to know, but for example, in John Bunyan, he had these blasphemous thoughts that came into his mind about God, that troubled him so much. The Lord finally broke the bondage by showing him that those were satanic interjections, as it were, that somehow Satan was able to penetrate or make him, or present certain thoughts before him. And at the same time, he then realized finally that when he did not coalesce with those thoughts or did not agree with those thoughts, but slammed the door on those thoughts, he wasn't sinning. It's like Bunyan said, if sin stands on your doorstep, it rings your doorbell. He didn't put it quite this way, I'm making it 21st century. It rings your doorbell, you open the door, you see Mr. Sin, and you shut the door right away, you haven't sinned. And that can be a big help to people who struggle. It's a complex question that you ask, but I think we can say, no, Satan doesn't know all of our thoughts. He's not omniscient like God, but sometimes he seems to have the kind of power to afflict certain believers in such a way that it's almost as if he can plant thoughts or temptations in our mind. You can say from demon possession that it's clear that evil has some It's a whole field of study. There's a whole field called Satanology and Demonology. You know, the Dispensationalists have written a lot following Schaeffer. And I'm not so sure that their books are always sound on it. I think the Reform need to do more on it. I've done a popular book on it, Striving Against Satan. But it's an awful subject to work with. I dreaded it. I only did it because I had to for a conference. But by the time I was done, I realized, wow, this is important. This can really help believers in their struggle against sin. And I think we need a couple of good Reformed men who do a master's thesis or a doctorate or something on this subject because not much is done in the Reformed camp on this whole area. And I think we need something a bit more biblically Reformed that wrestles with the very kinds of questions you're asking right now. Yes, Marty. Oh dear. I think where the last exam left off. I told you where the last exam left off. Don't you remember? Alright, we'll close with prayer. And if you'll stay tight for one moment, I did do the exam. I will run and get it and let you know. Okay? So who will close with prayer?