…is Halloween okay?
[Unless otherwise noted, all quotes are from Bullinger’s Decades and have been lightly adapted.]
The reality of angels and demons is not a subject I think about very often. While there is certainly something very satanic about the US cultural trend of women celebrating their abortions and politicians gleefully revelling in abortion, in social media figures encouraging the self-destructive ideology and practice of transgenderism, in those who not only reject Christianity for themselves but then go on a crusade to destroy Christianity for others, and in the brutality and debauchery of Islam, beyond specific acts of violence or blasphemy I see very little of these supernatural forces or influences in my life. When someone talks about angels or demons, it all just seems so medieval. Or sentimental, the way angels or devils are portrayed in television/film. But the Bible does teach us about these beings God has created. Angels and demons are part of creation, both for good and for ill. And yet, scripture doesn’t tell us all that much.
That which is not delivered in the scriptures cannot be inquired after without danger, but we can be ignorant of these things without danger. It’s enough to acknowledge that angels were created, whatever time at which they were created. Let us rather give thanks to God that he has created such excellent ministers for mankind. Let us live a holy an angel-like life in the sight of God’s holy angels. Let us watch lest [Satan], hiding under a good disguise, deceive us.
We can over-emphasize angels and demons, and we do this by inquiring too much into what scripture has said. By attempting to read beyond what scripture has said. By blaming too much on satanic influences. But we can also under-emphasize angels and demons, and we do this by minimising the reality of their actions and influence. By ignoring what scripture does actually teach on these subjects. By thinking our world is a closed-loop system.
And the Bible’s teaching on angels should genuinely encourage us. Look at Bullinger’s summary of why God created angels.
For among other innumerable and great benefits from God, benefits that should astonish us, this is not to be counted the least: that God has given us angels to be our servants. Truly this is an incredibly great token of his fatherly care and regard for us, chiefly because he relates to us so sweetly according to our capacities and dispositions.
Angels were created because God loves and relates tenderly to us. Hang on. The creatures created by the direct act of God and the word of his Son, the creatures that have immense power (one angel killed how many Assyrian troops camped outside Jerusalem and caused a regime change in the world’s superpower at the time?), the creatures described with such glory and beauty in scripture, these have been created – at least in part – for our benefit? And this is a sign of God’s love for us, his care for us, his disposition to deal with us gently and sweetly? What a God… What a wondrous love… And for us…
Yet there is a danger in going too far.
We must be careful that we don’t attribute too much to angels, something that is contrary to the nature of true religion, that we don’t worship them, that we don’t call on them or serve them…. Sincere religion teaches us to acknowledge God as the author of all good things, that the angels are the ministers of God, instruments by whom he works, as we see the sun, the moon, the stars, the patriarchs, the prophets, and the apostles.
Angels are, after all, only God’s servants. As we men are. We must not ascribe to them the glory and power that belong to God alone. And lest we think this is a temptation we’re immune to, the apostle John (in Revelation 22) would like a word.
So angels are God’s servants, created in part for our good. But what of the demons?
It is certain that all the devils are of the same corrupt will, bending all their force to this end alone: to be adversaries to God and hurtful enemies to men.
John Milton’s depictions of Satan (in Paradise Lost) creating an empire of rebellion – ‘A mind not to be chang’d by Place or Time/The mind is its own place, and in it self/Can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n’ (what complete and utter madness ‘to make a heaven of hell and a hell of heaven’!) – show the abject folly of rejecting God as King and Lord. Despite their high words of treason against the living God, Milton portrays their plots as that which must be taken in hiding and in tiny form. And yet God still sees.
Medieval Christianity looked at the devils as something to be mocked. While this wasn’t a good response, it also wasn’t totally wrong. Is it Chesterton or Lewis who says the one thing Satan can’t take is being laughed at? I think Luther also took a similar approach. Hence some of the portrayal of Satan and demons in ridiculous form that we have in our culture down to this day. And yet scripture gives us nothing humorous in its teaching on Satanic forces.
Satan hurts men in their minds, in their bodies, and in their goods. For he entices them and provokes our minds to sin. He also troubles the minds of men, and drives them into an outrage. Being disturbed in this outrage, he miserably vexes, torments, and executes them…. He also works against man by other creatures also – the elements for example – when he raises fire, winds, waters, hail, and such calamities against us, our friends to vex and betray us, and our enemies to consume and bring us to our end with persecutions, battles, and bloodshed.
Think of the boy possessed below the mountain where Jesus was transfigured. The contradiction between the glory of Christ revealed above and the satanic mauling of the boy below (was it because Christ was being shown as divine that the demon was so bent on the boy’s destruction?). Or the Gadarene man possessed by forces, who when prevented from tormenting any longer a creature made in God’s image, were desperate to ruin and destroy something, anything, even a herd of pigs. Dear brothers and sisters, we must remember that this is the devil’s true form. Chaos. Destruction. Pointless pain and senseless ruin. When we hear the serpent whispering in our ears as he did in the garden, ‘Did God really say?’, when we feel the pull to indulge in our lusts, to give vent to our feelings, to live how we want rather than how God has commanded, we must remember who our enemy really is and what he really wants: to destroy us simply to spite God. That’s where temptation comes from, from the same one who was behind that poor boy’s pain at the base of the mountain.
But let no man understand that these things mean the devil is able to do all things, for what he can do he can only do for a short time. His power is definite, or limited and restrained, so that he cannot do as much as he would. Otherwise, all things would have been overthrown and destroyed long ago. Therefore, it’s not without good reason that in describing the devil I have added that he is subject to God. He can do nothing without God’s permission. Now God permits him, either to test and prove the patience of those who are his, and to hasten their salvation, as is demonstrated in the history of Job and words of Paul to the Corinthians…. Or else he allows the devil permission to chastise their wickedness or to punish those who do not believe. For truly the devils are the instruments of God’s wrath to execute his vengeance.
So the solution to understanding both angels and demons is to remember that God is in control. God is sovereign. Vaughan Williams was wrong in his Job, Satan was never on God’s throne during Job’s trials. Even the trials and torments we face in this earthly life are under God’s control. That’s our hope in our deepest moments of pain. Absolutely nothing that happens to me has happened outside of the good and loving and wise and gracious plan of our Almighty Father.
These things greatly comfort the godly in temptations, those who understand that nothing can happen to them without God’s permissions, and that he permits nothing but what is useful for our improvement and salvation, and therefore we are always preserved by the providence and abundant generosity of God.
So when we face temptation, it may come from our enemy, or it may simply come from within (the old man resident in us). But it still comes to those in whom God’s Spirit is working to renovate and restore their souls. Thus we don’t have to know the precise source of our temptation to fight it as temptation. And we can know that one day we will be freed from pain, from trial, and from temptation – and that forever.
Next, on the soul of man and the certainty of salvation after death
