Demons Are NOT What You Think! (Feat. Michael Heiser)

What if I told you that everything you've been taught about demons is only half the story? They're not fallen angels. They didn't start off in hell. They didn't start off in heaven either. And their origin is so dark and so strange that most churches don't even talk about it.

But here's the crazy part. If you miss where demons really come from, then you're going to miss one of the most important reasons that Jesus spent three years on earth before the cross. Today we're going to identify what demons really are.

Are you ready? Here we go. Welcome back to Wise Disciple. My name is Nate Sala and I'm helping you become the effective Christian that you are meant to be, which includes understanding the true nature of our spiritual enemies.

Amen.

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Why Demons Are Not Fallen Angels

Now most people know the basics of that story. Christians believe it's why the world is the way it is. But that's actually incomplete. What happened in Eden was just the first of three reasons why there's so much evil and death in the world.

There were actually two more supernatural rebellions.

So what we do not appreciate is what Jesus is doing on the ground in the first century for those three years before he died on the cross and rose again. You know, if the gospel is the death and resurrection of Jesus, then why did he spend those three years traveling around and teaching and performing miracles?

Have you ever thought about that? Why didn't he just come to earth, die for sins immediately, and then just go back to heaven? Sometimes the same question is asked like this, you know, what was the gospel that Jesus preached?

What was Jesus proclaiming in the first century before he died and rose again? And the answer is the kingdom of heaven is here. But again, a lot of us don't appreciate this. That gospel message, the kingdom of heaven is here.

That was not just for human beings. It was also meant for the spiritual enemies of God to hear. The spiritual enemies who are all over the place on the ground in the first century. You know, they had an earthly stronghold that had to be defeated.

Genesis 6 and the Second Supernatural Rebellion

Genesis 6 describes the second supernatural rebellion. Some of the sons of God, members of the heavenly council, transgressed the boundary between heaven and earth.

The sons of God saw the daughters of humankind, that they were beautiful. The Nephilim were upon the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God went into the daughters of humankind, and they bore children to them.

Both Peter and Jude reference this story in the New Testament.

God did not spare the angels who sinned, but held them captive in Tartarus, with chains of darkness, and handed them over to be kept for judgment. And did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah.

So, I'm trying to imagine what Nate from like 10 years ago would have thought about this whole idea, right? Because, you know, look, a lot of us, we hear this and we go, too weird, no thanks. Angels from heaven that came to earth and had children with human beings?

Nah, that doesn't even make any sense, right? The sons of God are merely the rulers of Israel. Which, by the way, that's what I was taught in school. I had no idea about Heizer's scholarship when I was initially learning about the B 'nai Elohim in school.

Nevertheless, friends, we have to wrestle with the supernatural realm as Christians. And I think a lot of us in church act like the world is a lot more natural and a lot less super. You know what I mean?

As it turns out, there were divine beings that were made up of God's heavenly host, who chose to commit an abomination. They took human wives for themselves and had offspring. And those offspring were known as the Nephilim.

Look at this. Genesis chapter 6, verse 1. When man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them, the sons of God, the B 'nai Elohim, saw that the daughters of man were attractive, and they took as their wives any they chose.

Then the Lord said, my spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh. His days shall be 120 years. The Nephilim were on the earth in those days. And also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of man, and they bore children to them, these were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown.

We have to understand verses 5 and 6, which sort of leads up to the flood, right? They're not disconnected from verses 1 through 4. Verses 1 through 4 are also a lead up to the flood. Okay, but look at verse 5.

The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth and aggrieved him to his heart.

So then he goes on to say, I will blot out man, right? Again, a lot of us read that and we act as if verse 5 comes out of nowhere. That's not true. The wickedness of man comes out of the overflow of the events of verses 1 through 4.

Can you see that? This is the second recorded rebellion in the Bible. The first was in the garden of Eden. The second one is right here in Genesis chapter 6. The Lord regretted that he made man on the earth and aggrieved him to his heart.

And so he said, I will blot out man whom I've created from the face of the land. I'm sorry that I've made them. So God floods the earth, right? But wait, what does God do with these divine beings and their offspring?

Peter, Jude, and Tartarus

Second Peter chapter 2 tells us, look at this. For God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to chains of gloomy darkness to be kept until the judgment.

Okay.

If he did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah, a herald of righteousness with seven others, when he brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly, right? So, so is Peter describing multiple events that are unrelated to each other here?

No, it's the same event. Peter's greater point by bringing up the flood and what happened to these angels is this was all about unnatural and defiling lust.

Okay.

Look at, look at verse 10. That's where it comes together. And especially those who indulge in the lust of defiling passion and despise authority, right? This punishment of these divine beings of the sons of God are connected to defiling passion and despising authority.

That's why Peter says the angels were put in chains of gloomy darkness. It's right there in verse 10. In other words, what these sons of God did were led by their passions for human women and their disobedience to God.

Those are the preconditions for the flood of the whole world.

Jude also tells us about the judgment of these angels.

Both of these writers understood that Genesis 6 recorded the second supernatural rebellion. The fallen sons of God were sent to Tartarus for their transgression. Tartarus is a Greek word for the realm of the dead, what we think of as hell.

They'd stay there until the day of the Lord at the end of days. A term like fallen angels makes us think of demons like the ones Jesus cast out. But the rebels of Genesis 6 are imprisoned, so they can't be the demons Jesus encountered.

So pay attention to what Heizer is going to say here because there is an important distinction. What we call demons today are not the B 'nai Elohim. They are not the sons of God who had children with the daughters of men.

By the way, Tartarus is a Greek term that is meant to identify the prison of the titans, right? So if you remember Greek mythology, the titans were overthrown by the Olympians. The Olympians were led by Zeus, and the titans were cast into the deepest prison below the earth.

Look at this. This is from the Iliad. So I shall take him, this is Zeus speaking, and dash him down to the murk of Tartarus, far below where the uttermost depth of the pit lies under earth, where there are gates of iron and a brazen doorstone as far beneath the house of Hades as from earth the sky lies.

So Tartarus was this place that was so deep, it was below Hades. That's what it says, as far below Hades as Hades is from the earth. By the way, there's another word for this, friends. It's called the abyss.

Now, we know that Greek mythology is false, right? But it's false because it took something that is true and warped and corrupted the story. Pagan myths have often distorted an underlying reality that is rooted in what the Bible actually teaches.

Were there divine beings that rebelled against the Most High God? Yes. This is what the Bible has been communicating from the very beginning. And in 2 Peter, the apostle is saying that it wasn't the Titans that went to Tartarus.

It was the sons of God. It was the B 'nai Elohim. But they are not demons. So the question is, what are demons and where do they come from?

The Origin of Demons in Genesis 6

So where did they come from? The answer lies in the offspring produced by the forbidden union between the sons of God and the women in Genesis 6. Those offspring were known as the Nephilim. They were giants.

Their descendants became the giant clans Moses and Joshua battled.

The Nephilim were upon the earth in those days and also afterward.

In the books of Numbers and Deuteronomy, we learn about the giants Moses and Joshua ran into. They not only descended from the Nephilim, but they are called by other names like Anakim and the Rephaim.

That last name stands out. Several Bible passages describe the dead spirits of the Rephaim in the realm of the dead. Again, what we would think of as hell.

Ah, here we go. Here we go, ladies and gentlemen. Watch this. Isaiah 26. Verse 14 says, They are dead. They will not live. They are shades. They will not arise. Now this word for shades in the Hebrew is the word Rephaim.

Rephaim, as Heizer points out, is another name for the Nephilim in certain parts of the Old Testament. Look at this. Deuteronomy 2. Verse 10. The Amim formerly lived there, a people great and many and tall, as the Anakim.

So they're giants, right? Like the Anakim, they are also counted as Rephaim, but the Moabites call them Amim. Now, all of these giants are described as descendants of an earlier race in the Bible. And who is that?

The Nephilim. Look at Numbers chapter 13. And there we saw the Nephilim, the sons of Anak, who come from the Nephilim. And we seemed to ourselves like grasshoppers. And so we seem to them. All of these giant tribes, all of these giant clans, are categorized by the Bible as being the descendants of the sons of God.

And now we're back to Genesis chapter 6 again, right? But what's interesting about the Rephaim is, they are described as disembodied spirits that dwell in Sheol. Why? Well, because they are the unnatural offspring of divine rebellion.

These, you know, in their day were giants. They were kings, right? But when these hybrid enemies were taken from the earth, you know, they were taken, whether from like the flood or, or Israel's conquest post-Exodus, their spirits went to the underworld, to Sheol.

And their presence there is both a consequence of their unnatural origin and part of God's larger judgment against the divine rebellion that produced them. So you got to picture this, right? You have these sort of two stages of the story of demons.

On the one hand, you have their origin story, which is in Genesis chapter 6. They are the offspring of the sons of God and the daughters of men, the giants of old, the Nephilim. But then you also have their afterlife story, where they become restless, disembodied spirits.

It's two stages and it's the same story. That's what demons are. Can you see that? They are the post-mortem spirits of the Nephilim, who have become supernatural residents of the underworld.

Extrabiblical Jewish writers believe that demons, like those described in the Gospels, were disembodied spirits of the giants. They base this on the Bible's mention of dead Rephaim in the underworld. Jewish books like 1 Enoch and the book of the giants from the Dead Sea Scrolls make that point explicitly.

Now, the book of Enoch is not inspired by God, okay? The church acknowledges this. There is no ambiguity about it. That's why it's not included in our Bibles and for good reason, okay? Having said that, there is no question that some of the biblical authors, particularly the apostle Peter and Jude, were not only aware of 1 Enoch, but they drew from it in order to make theological points in their own letters.

All right?

1 Enoch, Jude, and the Evil Spirits on Earth

Go back and take a closer look at 2 Peter 2 .4. Where does Peter get the idea that angels who sinned were cast into Tartarus? 1 Enoch. In 1 Enoch, the author calls these beings watchers, and he describes them as being bound and cast into the abyss for judgment.

Now, Jude is actually even more explicit than that. Jude 14 not only explicitly mentions Enoch, he quotes directly from 1 Enoch. It was also about these that Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied, saying, behold, the Lord comes with 10 ,000 of his holy ones to execute judgment on all, and to convict all the ungodly of all their deeds of ungodliness that they have committed in such an ungodly way.

And of all the harsh things that ungodly sinners have spoken against him. That's a lot of ungodlies, right? What is Jude quoting from the book of Enoch? Having said that, there is something interesting about demons that 1 Enoch explains.

Look at this. And now the giants who are produced from the spirits and flesh shall be called evil spirits upon the earth, and on the earth shall be their dwelling. Evil spirits have proceeded from their bodies because they are born from men, and from the holy watchers is their beginning in primal origin.

They shall be evil spirits on earth and evil spirits shall they be called. 1 Enoch goes on to say that these spirits, that their sole purpose is to cause trouble, to afflict, to oppress and destroy, to attack and to do battle and work destruction on the earth.

Everything they do has that underlying goal.

All right.

Jesus, Unclean Spirits, and the Abyss

Now that you know this, think about this. The encounters that Jesus has with demon possessed people start to make more sense in the gospels. Have you ever noticed that, for example, in the gospels, demons are not always referred to as demons.

They're often called evil spirits, right? As a matter of fact, eight times in the New Testament, the phrase evil spirit is used to refer to demons. But that's not all. Did you know that there's another term that describes demons?

And this term is used more often than any other. I think it's something like 20 times in the gospels. It's unclean spirits, unclean spirits. Look at this. Matthew chapter eight, verse 28. And when he came to the other side, when Jesus came to the other side, to the country of the Gadarenes, two demon possessed men met him coming out of the tombs.

So fierce that no one could pass that way.

And behold,.

They cried out, what have you to do with us?

Oh,.

Son of God, have you come here to torment us before the time? Now that's interesting. This is Matthew's account of what took place.

However,.

If you look at the parallel accounts in Mark and Luke, you'll notice a word that is being used to describe these demons. They are unclean spirits. This is Luke chapter eight, verse 29, unclean spirit.

Do you see it?

Right?

Let's keep going. Now I heard of many pigs was feeding at some distance from them. And the demons begged him saying, if you cast us out, send us away into the herd of pigs. And he said to them,.

Go.

So they came out and went into the pigs and behold, the whole herd rushed down the steep bank into the sea and drowned in the waters. The herdsmen fled going into the city. They told everything, especially what had happened to the demon possessed men.

And behold,.

All the city came out to me, Jesus. When they saw him, they begged him to leave.

Okay.

Now let's walk through this a little bit slower. Did you notice where these two men are coming from? They're coming out of the tombs. The tombs where dead bodies are laid to rest,.

Right?

Are you seeing the connection? Demons were referred to as unclean spirits, right? So we showed you in Luke because many Jews understood these spirits to come from the realm of the dead, just as dead bodies were unclean,.

Right?

You go back to the old Testament. You look at all the purity passages regarding the dead,.

Right?

These spirits were also unclean, but it gets worse than that. They were also considered unclean because of the nature of their ontological mixture.

Okay.

They were now think about this. They were the mixture of supernatural and human. This is not what God intended when he made the world. And thus they were considered unclean. So you have a kind of a double uncleanness about these particular spirits,.

Right?

They come from the dead bodies. They're also an ontological mixture that was never intended. Now here's something else. Interesting. Luke's account. And I showed you this of this exorcism gives us another connection to demons and to the Nephilim.

All right,.

Look at this. If you scroll down, watch where they asked Jesus to go or where they ask him that they should not.

Go.

Verse 31. And they begged Jesus not to command them to depart into where the abyss. Do you see what's happening here at the outset? I said that an earthly stronghold of the enemy had to be defeated. That's what Jesus is doing.

When he casts out demons, he's taking back ground from these hostile powers and reclaiming it for the kingdom of heaven.

Now,.

You know what demons are according to the Bible.

Now,.

You know what they're doing, what they are continuing to do. Have you seen my other videos? What they're continuing to do on the earth until the day of judgment. These are not just random evil spirits floating around the earth.

They are the restless unclean remnants of a rebellion that began long before you were born, but they were also defeated a long time ago. They are a defeated enemy. I hope you can appreciate that Jesus.

He didn't just come to save you from sin. He came to reclaim enemy territory. To set captives free and to destroy the works of the devil. That's why we can live without fear, but not without vigilance.

Okay.

The supernatural realm is real. Ladies and gentlemen, the battle is real. And the more we understand it through scripture, the better we can stand firm and we can resist the enemy. So let's stay rooted in God's word.

Let's stay aware. And let's just remember,.

You know,.

The same Jesus who silenced the demons with a word is the one who lives in you.

Now.

Amen.

All right.

Now it's your turn. What's your take on demons in the unseen realm? Have you ever heard any of this stuff before? It's fascinating material. I've only opened the door, a crack to this particular topic.

And I encourage you keep going. You know what I mean? Keep going. Keep looking into these things. Let me know what you're coming up with in the comments below. I'd love to get your thoughts. You should take a look at the documentary.

So I'm going to leave a link for that in the notes, but also you should grab yourself a copy of the unseen realm by Michael Heiser. If you're really up for some homework, you should grab a copy of demons by Heiser as well.

These are eye openers for sure.

All right.

As always, if you enjoyed the insights here, why don't you check out my Patreon community? I'm there every day doing a Bible study. There's lots of extra perks here that I think will benefit you and bless.

You.

You can actually even meet up with me one-on-one.

Anyway,.

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All right, friends, I'm going to return soon with more videos, but in the meantime, I'll say bye for now.