This post doesn't relate specifically to the end times, but demons and devils seem to get discussed here more than on my other blogs so that's why it's here.
I've always thought of "demons" as the generic term for fallen angels or malevolent spiritual beings. Or "devils" as the King James has it. These are merely the terms already established in a particular language before the Bible was written in that language -- "devils" being the term in English and "demons" or "daemons" in Greek. Apparently the revisers of 1881 didn't much like the English language (see my blog The Great Bible Hoax) and foisted as many Hebrew and Greek terms on English-speaking people through their revision as they could get away with, at the great cost of unnecessary mystification for the average English-speaking Bible reader, on the supposition that the English terms were somehow inadequate. So they preferred the Greek "Hades" and the Hebrew "Sheol" to the English "Hell," as being somehow closer to the reality of the abode of punishment-- based on what inside knowledge is anyone's guess, but Westcott and Hort's whole theory of textual history was spun from mental cobwebs as it was, so there's not a whole lot to trust in anything they did.
The Bible isn't very explicit in defining either Hell OR the nature of devils, but there's no reason to think that the Hebrew or the Greek concepts have anything on the English concept. ALL the cultural concepts would no doubt have to be modified to fit the actual reality which can be known only through the Holy Spirit, all the cultural sources being ultimately untrustworthy even if they contain some truth. And Jesus' life, death, resurrection and ascension have changed all that anyway, in ways that are also not spelled out. The cultural terms describe a pre-Christian holding place insofar as they are accurate at all, holding until the completion of the work of the Messiah Jesus, so the specific differences from culture to culture which of course preexist His coming do not matter.
But I digress (have to complain about Westcott and Hort at every opportunity you know). To reiterate more briefly, the point I wanted to make was that all cultures have terms for devils and for Hell that preceded the Biblical revelation, and reasonable translators have always used the term of the culture to convey the Biblical meaning for that culture. Since the Bible doesn't give much of a picture of the nature of devils or of Hell the cultural recognition of such things is all we need anyway until the fulfillment of all things.
Sometimes a culture recognizes many different spiritual entities, and many different hells as well. Buddhism has at least six hells as I recall (from my pre-Christian days of spiritual seeking) each one designed to punish a particular sin, and as many paradises too I think, to reward degrees or kinds of righteousness. It's all temporary, however, a waystation preceding the return to another life on earth.
Until I became aware of all these things I had never given Hell much thought, but the discovery that such a place is acknowledged by most (all?) cultures was revelatory in itself. I suppose I'd had some vague idea that it was a peculiarly Christian concept. Demons or devils too. Seeing its universality gave it even more of a claim to authentic reality than I was already prepared to give it having apprehended that the Bible was truly God's word.
The main topic I had in mind for this post is whether demons or devils are the only evil spiritual beings. Occasionally one hears a Christian contend that there are others. It's true that the Bible pictures quite a variety of spiritual creatures, in the context of the throne of heaven particularly, but not malevolent or evil ones.
Different cultures may recognize a variety of spiritual beings, only some of which they regard as malevolent and call devils. These are the "gods" they worship. It's only through the Biblical revelation that we know that ALL of them are malevolent, under the leadership of Satan, intent on deceiving people just as Satan did back in Eden and attracting worship to themselves. Some 300 such "gods" are recognized in India for instance. Only the clearly hostile ones are called devils.
Again, from the Biblical perspective they are ALL devils, all fallen angels who oppose God and seek to draw humanity away from God.
They may appear in various forms, some partly animal for instance, some as "fairies" or "gnomes" and the like, everything from petty mischief-makers to ferocious monsters, such as those images often found in Asia and India with bloody skulls draped around them. Some appear as beautiful shining angels, and some even as half devil and half angel.
I've usually thought of all these spiritual entities as Satan's horde of angels that fell with him as described in Ezekiel and Isaiah, before the world was created, but the Bible also suggests -- in Genesis 6 -- that some angels fell by being attracted to women after the Creation, and "married" them and had offspring by them. I don't know whether this is to be regarded as a separate instance of angels falling, but they WERE angels (that's what "sons of God" means) so they weren't some other kind of spiritual being. Their offspring were giants, or Nephilim, part human, part angel, not described in any detail in the Bible but quite a bit in the Book of Enoch, an "apocryphal" book that (most of) the early Church fathers regarded as inspired, though it lost that status later.
The Nephilim seem to have a lot in common with the Greek and Roman gods who had both gods and humans for parents, the "mighty men of old" as the Bible puts it, such as Hercules. There are part human and part animal creatures too in some religions. Some suggest that these were the result of experiments by fallen angels in an attempt to destroy the human seed that God intends to save, and that this sort of tampering is still going on through the agency of "extraterrestrials" (demons in disguise of course) who abduct people to their "UFOs" where supposedly they perform many experiments with the human reproductive system. I've never investigated any of this myself but the existence of strange creatures in the lore of many cultures along with the hints in the Bible make it seem plausible enough to me.
And perhaps in some cultures these creatures are thought of as spiritual entities, and perhaps they are partly so, but all the Bible says is that angels fell, no other kind of creature.
Therefore it seems possible that "angels" come in many different forms so that there are many different kinds of demons or devils as well, they being merely fallen angels.
The point is that the Bible speaks ONLY of fallen "angels," not any other kind of malevolent spiritual being, and hints at no "fall" of spiritual beings other than angels, but any other kinds of malevolent spiritual beings that may exist would have to have fallen as all were originally created to obey God. They'd all have to have been "angels" originally, and now "fallen angels" or "demons" or "devils" even if they exist in a great variety of forms.
It must be obvious from this musing that I haven't spent much time reading up on demonology as all this is off the top of my head.
You Must Be Born Again
2 months ago
