Last week was a discussion of Angels, so this leads naturally into a discussion about Satan and demons, since they are evil angels who once were like good angels but who sinned and lost their privilege of serving God. Like angels, they were also created, spiritual beings with moral judgement and high intelligence but without physical bodies. We will define demons as follows: Demons are evil angels who sinned against God and now who continually work evil in the world.
When God created the world, he “saw everything that he made, and behold, it was very good” (Genesis 1:31). This means that even the angelic world that God created did not have evil angels or demons in it at that time. By the time of Genesis 3, we find that Satan, in the form of a serpent, was tempting Eve to sin (Genesis 3:1 – 5). Therefore, sometime between the events of Genesis 1:31 and Genesis 3:1, there must have been a rebellion in the angelic world with many angels turning against God and becoming evil.
The New Testament speaks of this in two places. Peter tells us, “God did not spare the angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to pits of nether gloom to be kept until the judgement” (2 Peter 2:4). Jude also says that “the angels that did not keep their own position but left their proper dwelling have been kept by him in eternal chains in the nether gloom until the judgement of the great day” (Jude 6). Once again the emphasis is on the fact that they are removed from the glory of God’s presence and their activity is restricted (metaphorically, they are in “eternal chains”), but the text does not imply either that the influence of demons has been removed from the world or that some demons are kept in a place of punishment apart from the world while others are able to influence it. Rather, both 2 Peter and Jude tell us that some angels rebelled against God and became hostile opponents to his Word. Their sin seems to have been pride, a refusal to accept their assigned place, for they “did not keep their own position but left their proper dwelling (Jude 6).
“Satan” is the personal name of the head of the demons. This name is mentioned in Job 1:6, where “the sons of God came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan also came among them”. Here he appears as the enemy of the Lord who brings severe temptations against Job. Similarly, near the end of David’s life, “Satan stood up against Israel, and incited David to number Israel” (1 Chronicles 21:1).
Also, Zechariah saw a vision of “Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of the LORD, and Satan standing at his right hand to accuse him” (Zechariah 3:1). The name “Satan” is a Hebrew word that means “adversary”. The New Testament also uses the name “Satan” simply taking it over from the Old Testament. Jesus, in his temptation in the wilderness, speaks to Satan directly saying, “Be gone, Satan!” (Matthew 4:10), or “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven” (Luke 10:18).
The Bible uses other names for Satan as well. He is called “the devil” (Matthew 4:1; 13:39; 25:41; Revelations 12:9; 20:2), “the serpent” (Genesis 3:1; 14:2; 2 Corinthians 11:3; Revelation 12:9; 20:2), “Beelzebul” (Matthew 10:25; Luke 11:15), “the ruler of this world” (John 12:31) “The prince of the power of the air” (Ephesians 2:2), and “the evil one” (Matthew 13:19; 1 John 2:13). When Jesus says to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a hindrance to me; for you are not on the side of God, but of men” (Matthew 16:23), he recognizes that Peter’s attempt to keep him from suffering and dying on the cross is really an attempt to keep him from obedience to the Father’s plan. Jesus realizes that opposition ultimately comes not from Peter, but from Satan himself.
Satan sinned before any human being did so, as evidence from the fact that he (in the form of the serpent) tempted Eve (Genesis 3:1 – 6; 2 Corinthians 11:3). The New Testament also informs us that Satan was a “Murderer from the beginning” and is “a liar and the father of lies” (John 8:44). It also says that “the devil has sinned from the beginning” (1 John 3:8). In both of these texts, the phrase “from the beginning” does not imply that Satan was evil from the time God began to create the world or from the beginning of his existence, but rather from the “beginning” parts of the history of the world (Genesis 3 and even before). The devil’s characteristic has been to originate sin and tempt others to sin.
Just as Satan tempted Eve to sin against God (Genesis 3:1 – 6), so he tried to get Jesus to sin and fail in his mission as Messiah (Matthew 4:1 – 11). The tactics of Satan and his demons are to use lies (John 8:44), deception (Revelation 12:9), murder (Psalm 106:37), and every other kind of destructive activity to attempts to cause people to turn away from God and destroy themselves. Demons will try every tactic to blind people to the Gospel (2 Corinthians 4:4), and keep them in bondage to things that hinder them from coming to God (Galatians 4:8). They will also try to use temptation, doubt, guilt, fear, confusion, sickness, envy, pride, slander, or any other means possible to hinder a Christian’s witness and usefulness.
Yet demons are limited by God’s control and have limited power. The story of Job makes it clear that Satan could only do what God gave him permission to do and nothing more (John 1:12; 2:6). Demons are kept in “eternal chains” (Jude 6) and can be successfully resisted by Christians through the authority that Christ gives them (James 4:7).
The power of demons is limited. After rebelling against God, they do not have the power they had when they were angels, for sin is a weakening and destructive influence. The power of demons, though significant, is therefore probably less that the power of angles.
In the area of knowledge, we should not think that demons can know the future or that they can read our minds of know our thoughts. In many places in the Old Testament, the Lord shows himself to be the true God in distinction from the false (demonic) gods of the nations by the fact that he alone can know the future: “I am God, and there is none like me, declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done” (Isaiah 46:9 – 10).
There have been differing stages of demonic activity in the history of redemption. In the Old Testament, the word demon is not often used. It might at first seem that there is little indication of demonic activity. However, the people of Israel often sinned by serving false gods, and when we realize that these false “gods” were really demonic forces, we see that there is quite a bit of Old Testament material referring to demons.
Consistent with the purpose of Satan to destroy all the good works of God, pagan worship of demonic idols was characterized by destructive practices such as the sacrifice of Children (Psalm 106:35 – 37), inflicting bodily harm on oneself (1 Kings 18:28), and cult prostitution as part of pagan worship (Deuteronomy 23:17; 1 Kings 14:24). Worship of demons will regularly lead to immoral and self-destructive practices.
During the ministry of Jesus: After hundreds of years of inability to have any effective triumph over demonic activity forces, it is understandable that when Jesus came casting out demons with absolute authority, the people were amazed: “And they were all amazed, so that they questioned among themselves, saying, ‘what is this? A new teaching! With authority, he commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him’” (Mark 1:27). Such power over demonic forces had never before seen in the history of the world.
Jesus explains that his power over demons is a distinguishing mark on his ministry to inaugurate the reign of the kingdom of God among mankind in a new and powerful way:
But if it is not by the Spirit of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you. Or how can one enter a strong man’s house and plunder his goods, unless he first binds the strong man? Then indeed he may plunder his house (Matthew 12:28 – 29).
The “strong man” is Satan, and Jesus has bound him, probably at the time of his triumph over him in the wilderness (Matthew 4:1 – 11). During his earthly ministry, Jesus had entered the strong man’s “house” (the world of unbelievers who are under the bondage of Satan), and he was plundering his house, that is, freeing people from the satanic bondage and bringing them into the joy of the kingdom of God. It was “by the Spirit of God” that Jesus did this; the new power of the Holy Spirit working to triumph over demons was evidence that the ministry of Jesus “the kingdom of God has come upon you.”
This authority over demonic powers was not limited to Jesus himself, for he gave similar authority first to the Twelve (Matthew 10:8; Mark 3:15), and then to the seventy disciples. After a period of ministry, the seventy “returned with joy, saying, ‘Lord, even the demons are subject to us in your name!’” (Luke 10:17). Then Jesus responded, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven” (Luke 10:18), indicating again a distinctive triumph over Satan’s power. Authority over unclean spirits later extended beyond the seventy disciples to those in the early church who ministered in Jesus’ name (Acts 8:7; 16:18; James 4:7; 1 Peter 5:8 – 9), a fact consistent with the idea that ministry in Jesus’ name in the new covenant age is characterized by triumph over the powers of the devil (1 John 3:8).
During the millennium, the future thousand-year reign of Christ on earth mentioned in Revelation 20, the activity of Satan and demons will be further restricted. Using language that suggests a much greater restriction of Satan’s activity than we see today, john describes his vision of the beginning of the Millennium as follows:
Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven, holding the key of the abyss and a great chain in his hand. And he laid hold of the dragon, the serpent of old, who is the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years; and he threw him into the abyss, and shut it and sealed it over him, so that he would not deceive the nations any longer, until the thousand years were completed; after these things he must be released for a short time. (Revelation 20:1 – 3)
Here Satan is described as completely deprived of any ability to influence the earth. During the millennium, however, there will still be sin in the hearts of the unbelievers, which will grow until the end of the thousand years when there will be a large-scale rebellion against Christ, led by Satan who, having been “loosed from his prison” (Revelation 20:7), will come to lead the rebellion (Revelation 20:8 – 9). The fact that sin and rebelliousness persist in people’s hearts apart from the activity of Satan, even during the thousand-year reign of Christ, shows that we cannot blame all sin in the world on Satan and his demons. Even when Satan is without influence in the world, sin will remain and be a problem in people’s hearts.
At the end of the millennium, when Satan is loosed and gathers the nations for battle, he will be decisively defeated and “thrown into the lake of fire and Sulphur” and “tormented day and night for ever and ever” (Revelation 20:10). Then the judgement of Satan and his demons will be complete.
Next week we will discuss our relationship to demons and if demons are active in the world today.