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Demonic Spirits
(From Forerunner Commentary)

Genesis 15:8-17  (Go to this verse :: Verse pop-up) In Genesis 15:8-17, Abraham asks for evidence that God will follow through. He receives a command to prepare a sacrifice and an additional prophecy concerning his family's future. Genesis 15:12 shows that he made the sacrifice during the daylight part of the 14th. By this sacrifice, God ratifies His promise to Abraham. Many have wondered why Christ was sacrificed during the daylight portion of the 14th, in the afternoon, rather than at its beginning and more in alignment with the Passover service in the twilight portion of the 14th. This reveals why. Even as He ratified His covenant of promise with Abraham by this sacrifice, Christ's sacrifice provides the ratification of the New Covenant. Christ's sacrifice, by God's decree, had to align with the ratification of His covenant of promise with Abraham. In Christ's sacrifice, death, and burial, God's draws together in one event the main elements of both the covenant of promise with Abraham and the Passover. Notice especially how close this chronological alignment is. Verse 12 specifically states, "When the sun was going down." Thus, this sacrifice, like Christ's, took place in the afternoon. In the late afternoon, a great darkness and horror fell upon Abraham, allowing him to experience a small taste of the horror Christ faced in His crucifixion when God forsook Him. In addition, Moses inserts a detail that is not so readily apparent at Christ's crucifixion: that Abraham had to beat off some vultures. Vile birds are a Bible symbol of demons. This detail suggests that a great spiritual battle occurred, during which the demons taunted and persecuted Christ to induce Him to give up. He had to fight them off alone because the Father had forsaken Him. John W. Ritenbaugh Countdown to Pentecost 2001

Exodus 34:14-16  (Go to this verse :: Verse pop-up) God does not stop with one form of idolatry because He again specifically warns in Leviticus 17:7: "They shall no more offer their sacrifices to demons, after whom they have played the harlot. This shall be a statute forever for them throughout their generations." And again in Leviticus 20:6, "And the person who turns to mediums and familiar spirits, to prostitute himself with them, I will set My face against that person and cut him off from his people." John W. Ritenbaugh The Beast and Babylon (Part Nine): Babylon the Great

Job 2:6  (Go to this verse :: Verse pop-up) Here is a principle that we can take great comfort in. As He does with Job, God also deals with us. God has set limits on what Satan or the demons are able to do with or to us. God deals with us according to the measure of our faith, our love, the measure of His Spirit within us. By faith, we have to deal with what He allows to occur, understanding that we love God for what He is and not because He has given us good things. That is an additional blessing. We see, then, that from time to time we will have to overcome the demons that God allows to test us. John W. Ritenbaugh Satan (Part 1)

Acts 16:16-18  (Go to this verse :: Verse pop-up) A woman possessed by a demon begins to follow Paul and his party, calling them "servants of the Most High God" (verses 16-17). Though this is true, it greatly distresses Paul because the Jews might conclude that he consorted with soothsayers, unlawful according to Leviticus 19:31; 20:6; and Deuteronomy 18:9-14. From their point of view, the Gentiles might consider the religion Paul preached to be as pagan as all the other religions of the time. Thus, Paul commands the demon to leave the woman in the name of Jesus Christ (Acts 16:18). Her employers, who made quite a profit by her fortune telling, are not pleased because her supernatural abilities disappeared with the demon. So they haul Paul and Silas before the city courts (verse 18). Mark Schindler Ingratitude

1 Peter 3:19-20  (Go to this verse :: Verse pop-up) Some theologians maintain the tradition that Christ was preaching to departed human "spirits in prison" while He was in "hell" (Acts 2:31). That idea is absolutely false. Verse 20 makes it plain that those to whom Christ preached (concerning their rebellious activities on earth) were demon spirits, and that He preached to them during the days of Noah! This verse is not talking about the three days and nights Jesus was dead in the grave at all! What Is Hell?

1 Peter 3:19-20  (Go to this verse :: Verse pop-up) Some have seized upon I Peter 3:19-20 as supposed proof that Jesus was alive when He was dead—that He preached to spirits in prison during the three days and three nights in which He was in the grave asleep in death! But notice what these verses in Peter's letter really say. Wicked angels who followed Satan are in chains of darkness, imprisoned for their own folly (Jude 6). When did Jesus preach to the imprisoned spirits? Read it: "When once the long suffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing. . . ." That is when Jesus preached to the spirits or wicked angels—in the days of Noah, not during the time He was dead and buried in the grave! Herbert W. Armstrong (1892-1986) What Is the Reward of the Saved?

 

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