Hi, I'm David Bercot, and tonight we're going to be talking about what the early Christians believed about Satan and the demons. First, I'll be sharing with you what the early church had to say about Satan himself. Now we won't be spending a lot of time on the subject of Satan, because what the early Christians believed is probably the same thing you have always believed yourself.
So most of the message tonight will be focusing on what the early Christians believed about the demons, specifically who the demons are and where they came from. For many of you, what they believed about the demons will be something entirely new to you, so I'm going to be discussing in detail exactly why they believed what they did. And I'll be showing you how the Scriptures back up what they believed, and the fact that there's even historical support for their belief.
Finally, we're going to be talking about the activities of the demons and whether or not Christians have anything to fear from them. So let's begin with Satan. Who was he? How did he come into being? Well, Origen wrote this.
He said," Regarding the devil, his angels and the opposing forces, most Christians hold this opinion that the devil was an angel, and that having become apostate, he induced as many of the angels as possible to fall away with him." Irenaeus wrote," From this we learn that Satan was the apostate angel and the enemy, for he was envious of God's workmanship, and took in hand to render this workmanship into something at enmity with God." For this reason too, God has banished from His presence, the one who of His own
accord stealthily sowed the tares.
I'm referring to the one who brought about the transgression. It was written about the year 180. Tertullian, writing about the year 207, said," From where did this malice of lying and deceit towards man and slandering of God originate?" Most certainly not from God, for he made the angel good after the fashion of his good works. Indeed, before he became the devil, he stood forth as the wisest of creatures. And wisdom is no evil.
If you turn to the prophecy of Ezekiel, you will at once realize that this angel was good by creation. It was by choice that he became corrupt. For in the person of the Prince of Tyre, it says things in reference to the devil. The last quote I want to read to you about Satan is from the disputation of Archelaus in Manes, which dates to about the year 320. Now, these are all just sample quotations. You could find many, many similar quotes from the early Christians.
In this work, it says," Certain of the angels, refusing to submit themselves to the commandment of God, resisted His will, and one of them indeed fell like a flash of lightning upon the earth. And that angel who was cast down to earth, finding no further admittance into any of the regions of heaven, now flaunts about among men, deceiving them and luring them to become transgressors like himself. Even to this day, he is an adversary to the commandments of God.
For this reason, he has also obtained the name of devil because he has passed over from the heavenly places and appeared on earth as the disparager of God's commandments. So in summary, what the early Christians believed about Satan was that he was an angel who was created perfect and good. God did not create any evil beings. In fact, Satan was apparently an angel or a cherub with considerable importance. Yet he was envious of God and God's workmanship. He wanted worship for himself.
And so he turned evil out of his own free will. And he was the one who spoke through the serpent in the Garden of Eden and led mankind into sin. And he's induced other angels to join him in this rebellion against God. Now, as I mentioned earlier, this is what I've always believed, and more than likely, this is what all of you have always believed as well. In the passage I read from Tertullian, he said something to the effect that in the person of the Prince of Tyre, the Bible says things in reference to the devil.
Now here he's referring to the book of Ezekiel chapter 28. We don't have time to read that entire chapter, but let me read some excerpts from it. It says this," Son of man, take up a lamentation for the king of Tyre, and say to him,' Thus says the Lord God,' You were the seal of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty. You were in Eden, the garden of God. You were the anointed cherub who covers. I establish you, you were on the holy mountain of God.
You were perfect in your ways from the day you were created until iniquity was found in you. Your heart was lifted up because of your beauty. You corrupted your wisdom for the sake of splendor. Now, even though that passage is addressed to the King of Tyre, the things that it says there don't seem to apply to any human, but rather the early Christians seem to have all understood that this was talking actually about Satan.
For example, Origen wrote," We find in the prophet Ezekiel two prophecies written to the king of Tyre. The second is clearly of such a kind that it cannot be at all understood about a man. It must refer to some superior power who had fallen away from a higher position and had been reduced to a lower and worse condition. I will take from it an illustration by which it may be demonstrated with the utmost clearness that those opposing and malignant spiritual powers were not formed or created so by nature.
Rather, they fell from a better to a worse position and were converted into wicked beings. Now who could be supposed to be stainless from the very day of his creation? Of whom could it be said that wickedness was only afterwards discovered in Him? Must this not be said of Him who was cast forth upon the earth? I have shown then that what we have quoted regarding the King of Tyre from the prophet Ezekiel refers to an adverse power. And from this it is most clearly proved that this power was created holy and happy.
So the early Christians stressed the fact that God does not create anything evil, but He did endow the angels as well as mankind with free will, having the choice to either choose good or to choose evil. And Satan, even though he was an angel and an angel with enormous wisdom of his own accord chose to follow evil, and he led many of the other angels to do the same thing as well as leading man into rebellion against God.
Now I want to look for a moment at what the early Christians had to say about our fight against Satan. Tertullian wrote," That most stubborn foe never gives his malice a rest. Indeed, he is then the most savage when he fully feels that a man is freed from his clutches. He then flames fiercest while he is fast becoming extinguished. He must have necessitated grieve and groan over the fact that by the grant of pardon, so many works of death in man have been overthrown.
He grieves that so many marks of condemnation, which formerly was his own, have now been erased. He grieves that this former sinner, who is now Christ's servant, is destined to judge him and his angels. And so the foe observes of Saul's and attacks him. Yes, Satan hates to lose one of his victims to the kingdom of God. And so he fights to keep mankind in his bondage. And when someone leaves him, he fights against that person even more to try to win him back.
Cyprian wrote similarly, he said the apostle Peter in his epistle forewarns and teaches saying," Be sober and watch, for your adversary the devil goes about as a roaring lion, seeking anyone to devour." He continues," He goes about each one of us. He is like an enemy besieging those who are shut up in the city. He examines the walls and tests to see if any parts of the walls are less firm and less trustworthy. For perhaps he can make a breach and penetrate to the inside.
He presents to the eyes seductive forms and easy pleasures by the sight of which he might destroy chastity. He tempts the ears with harmonious music so that by the hearing of sweet sounds he may relax and weaken Christian vigor. He promises earthly honors so he can deprive us of heavenly ones. And when he cannot deceive us secretly, he threatens plainly and openly, brandishing the fear of fierce persecution to conquer God's servants. He is always restless and always hostile.
He is crafty in peace and fierce in persecution. So the early Christians recognized that Satan is not someone to be taken lightly. He's no myth. He's not someone we don't have to think about. He is out there and he is seeking to devour anyone that he can. And that is why Paul said we have to put on this complete suit of armor and constantly be vigilant against Satan. And yet the early Christians weren't afraid of Satan. As Cyprian said, the devil has no power against man unless God allows it.
In the gospel according to John, it is written," Jesus said," You could have no power against me, unless it were given to you from above." So there is a difference between being on guard against the wiles of Satan, being firm in faith against outward persecution that Satan stirs up, and quaking in fear about Satan, being afraid that somehow he can do something to us, because he can do nothing to us unless God permits it.
Well, in summary, in what the early Christians had to believe about Satan, it's very clear that the modern notion that there's no personal devil or that we don't have to be on guard against Satan is not the historic Christian faith. It's exactly what Satan wants us to believe. After all, what better way to mislead mankind than to duping them into thinking that he doesn't even exist? But we Christians know better. Now let's talk about where the demons came from, what the early Christians believed about that.
I've been quite surprised when I share with people the early Christian understanding of the origin of demons that many people are taking quite aback, like I am telling them something very strange or weird. One, it has always been obvious to me that they are simply expressing exactly what the Bible says. Well, their understanding of the origin of the demons comes directly from the book of Genesis.
Genesis chapter 6, verses 1 and 2, and then I'll read also verse 4, where it says," Now it came to pass when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born to them, that the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair, and they took themselves wives of all whom they chose.
There were giants in the earth in those days, and also after that, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men, and they bore children to them, the same became mighty men, which were of old, men of renown." Well, to the early Christians, this was quite clear. The heavenly sons of God looked down upon the earth, saw that humans had wives, which angels did not have.
They saw the beauty of the daughters of men, so they came to the earth, took on material bodies as angels do all throughout the Scriptures, and they took wives for themselves. But because they were not true humans themselves, their offspring were a hybrid between angel and men, and they were these giants, who it says, were the mighty men of renown of ancient times, and we'll talk a little bit more about that.
Well, of course, all of that was wiped out in the flood, but the souls of these giants, the early Christians believed, are the demons. And this seems to have been a universal belief among them, with just one exception that we'll talk about later. Let me read now just some of the very typical quotations.
Justin Martyr writes," The angels transgressed this appointment given by God and were captivated by love of women, and they begat children who are those who are called demons." Irenaeus, writing about the year 180, says," In the days of Noah, God justly brought on the deluge for the purpose of extinguishing that most infamous race of men then existent, who could not bring forth fruit to God, for the angels who sinned had co-mingled with them." See, this helps us to understand why the flood was so necessary, why
this couldn't have just been a local thing like his destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.
The whole human race now had become corrupted to a large degree. He needed to just wipe all of that civilization out and start over with a pure righteous human family who was represented in Noah and his wife and children. Tertullian, writing about the year 198, says," Those angels who invented jewelry, et cetera, are assigned under condemnation to the penalty of death. They are the same angels who rushed from heaven on the daughters of men.
If it is true, they laid bare the operations of metallurgy, divulged the natural property of herbs, promulgated the powers of enchantment, and traced out every curiosity even to the interpretation of the stars. They conferred appropriately, and as it were, peculiarly upon women, that instrumental means of womanly ostentation, the radiances of jewels, the dyes of orchil with which wools are dyed, and that black powder itself with which the eyelids and eyelashes are made prominent.
Another writer, Commodianus, written about the year 240, says," Such was the beauty of women that had turned the angels aside. As a result being contaminated, they could not return to heaven. Being rebels from God, they uttered words against Him. Then the highest uttered His judgment against them. And from their seed, giants are said to have been born. By them, arts were made known in the earth. They taught the dyeing of wool and everything that is done. When they died, men erected images to them.
I'm going to read you one last quote, and all of these are, as I said, very representative. You see this all throughout the early Christian writings. Lactantius writing about the year 304 said," God in His foresight sent angels for the protection and improvement of the human race, lest the devil should either corrupt or destroy men through his subtlety.
Since he had given these angels a free will, he admonished them above all things not to defile themselves with contamination from the earth, and thus lose the dignity of their heavenly nature. However, while the angels lived among men, that most deceitful ruler of the earth, by his very association, gradually enticed them to vices and polluted them through sexual relations with women. Thereafter not being admitted into heaven because of the sins into which they had plunged themselves, they fell to the earth.
So that was the early Christian view of the origin of the demons. And as I understand them, the demons themselves are not these wicked angels, but rather the souls of the giants, who when the giants were killed, their souls lived on. This explains why the demons are so drawn to mankind, why they want to possess human bodies, because they themselves will never have a human body again, and why they are in particular drawn to women. Now, as I mentioned, this may not at all be the view that you grew up hearing.
And if you turn to your trusty commentary, that's probably not the view you're going to find in it either. The view that is commonly put forth today is that that passage in Genesis, where it says the sons of God looked upon the daughters of man that they were fair or beautiful and took wives to themselves.
And that's talking about the sons of Seth, and they married the daughters of Cain, or I should say the descendants of Seth, the male descendants of Seth, marrying the female descendants of Cain, and that is what is so commonly taught today. So why did the early Christians believe what they did? Well, actually, the burden of proof is not on the early Christians. It's on these modern commentators.
Because if we want to put forth a view that is different from the historic understanding of the church, then we have the burden of proof to show that they were wrong and that our interpretation has solid biblical basis. But where in the Bible do we read anything about the sons of Seth doing anything with the daughters of Cain, or that if they did, that was something condemned by God? There's no reference in the New Testament to that. There's absolutely nothing to base that on. It's purely a conjecture.
And in a few minutes, we're going to talk about where that view originated. But let's now just look at why the early Christians did believe what they did based on that passage in Genesis. We'll start with the term" sons of God" that is used there in Genesis 6. Now, is that term" sons of God" ever used in the Bible to describe the descendants of Seth? No, not even once. There's absolutely no biblical precedent to suggest to us that the term" sons of God" could be talking about the descendants of Seth.
In fact, nowhere in the Old Testament is that ever used of any humans, but the term" sons of God" is used in the Old Testament. Turn with me in your Bible to the book of Job. Job chapter 1:6, we read," Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came among them." Obviously, those sons of God mentioned there are the creatures that we refer to as angels. And it's used very similarly in chapter 2 verse 1 of Job.
It says," Again, there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan came also among them to present himself before the Lord." Let me read you another passage from Job, Job chapter 38, verses 4 through 7. And this is when God Himself is talking to Job. He says," Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell me if you have understanding who determined its measurements? Surely you know, or who stretched the line upon it?
To what were its foundations fastened, or who laid its cornerstone when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?" Again, that's obviously talking about angels because no humans were around when the earth itself was created. And it's very interesting that this is the term used in the book of Job to describe angels, because many scholars believe that the book of Job is the oldest book of the Bible. As far as we know, Job lived during the time of the patriarchs.
But it is clear that during this time, that angels were referred to by the designation" Sons of God." So it would be a natural thing there in Genesis 6 when it talks about the sons of God to understand this is talking about angels. It's important that you remember that there is not a special Hebrew word for angel as there is in English. The Hebrew word that is translated" angel" in our English Bibles simply is the Hebrew word that means messenger. It applies to human messengers or it applies to heavenly messengers.
And again, if Genesis is talking about the sons of Seth and the daughters of Cain, why wouldn't it have just said so? Why would it have used such cryptic language? I mean, after all, the book of Genesis is not an apocalyptic book. It's a book that's pretty straightforward in its language. It doesn't talk in riddles. The next point, it says that the sons of God saw the daughters of man, that they were fair or beautiful.
Now, why would the daughters who descended from Cain have seemed particularly beautiful to the sons descended from Seth? Why would they have been any more beautiful than the daughters who were descended from Seth? No answer. Doesn't make any sense. But to the angels, there were no female angels. In a sense, angels have no gender because they are not male and female, but they are always presented as male. Every time they have materialized bodies, it has always been as males.
And again, they were called the sons of God there, not the children or the sons and daughters of God. So they saw something here on earth that they did not have in heaven, a female counterpart to themselves. Another question we would have to ask, now why would the union of male descendants of Seth and female descendants of Cain produced giants? That would have been an ordinary thing, human beings marrying human beings. But angelic beings who've taken on human bodies but are not truly human.
Yes, it's easy to believe that union would have produced something extraordinary, something more than human, giants, the mighty men of renown of ancient times that Genesis talks about. So just looking at that passage in Genesis itself, if we haven't already had our mind blocked by these preconceptions that our commentaries give us, that's the logical reading of that. As we saw, this is how all the early Christians read it, with one exception that I'll be talking about as I promised.
Now, I think the account there in Genesis 6 is sufficient by itself to support the early Christian view. I don't think anything else is needed. It's the most logical understanding of that passage in Genesis. But the early Christian view doesn't rest simply on the passage in Genesis, because there are two references in the New Testament to the same event with the same interpretation. The first is in 2 Peter chapter 2 verses 4 and 5.
Where it says this," God did not spare the angels who sinned, but cast them down to hell and delivered them into chains of darkness to be reserved for judgment, and did not spare the ancient world, but save Noah." So there you have a reference to angels who sinned, whom God is punished, and the ancient world that God did not spare but saved Noah. Now, if the reference in Genesis 6 is not talking about angels, then where in the Bible is there a reference of angels who sinned, whom God punished?
I mean, Peter's not talking about something unfamiliar to his readers. He's talking to them about something they would know about, just like they knew about Noah and the flood. I say that because everything else he gives as an example are things that we read about in the book of Genesis.
He continues bringing in the flood on the world of the ungodly and turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah into ashes, condemned them to destruction, making them an example to those who afterward would live ungodly, and delivered righteous Lot, who was oppressed by the filthy conduct of the wicked. So see, these are all events there in the book of Genesis that Peter assumes his reader is familiar with.
So if the angels that God did not spare who sinned is not talking about Genesis 6, well then where is it in the book of Genesis? Where are these angels who sinned that God delivered into chains of darkness? If you take out the historical understanding of that passage and say that's the sons of Seth and the daughters of Cain, well then who are these angels who sinned in the days of Noah? Now, our Bibles there says that He cast them down to hell.
That's actually a very poor translation because in this passage Peter uses a Greek word that appears nowhere else in Scripture. And it's not the same word that's translated hell. The word that is properly translated hell is Gehenna. But these angels were not cast into Gehenna or into Hades. They were cast into a special place that Peter refers to as Tartarus, which meant something very significant to his Greek readers that we're going to be talking about.
In contrast, there is nothing said in the New Testament about the sons of Seth sinning and being punished. Now the book of Jude refers to this same event.
Jude verse 6 says this," The angels who did not keep their proper domain but left their own habitation, he has reserved in everlasting chains under darkness for the judgment of the great day." Now, if you look at that verse side by side with the verse we just read in Peter, it's obviously talking about the same event because both times it says that they've been delivered to chains of darkness or everlasting chains under darkness, as Jude puts it.
And Peter links this event with the ancient world during the time of Noah, and Jude says that these were angels who did not keep their proper domain.
I mean, this all fits so perfectly with the natural reading of Genesis 6." Angels who did not keep their proper domain, who left heaven, came down to the earth, in the days of Noah, and whom God has punished." Now when you put those three Scripture passages together, to me it's quite clear what it's talking about, particularly when you couple it with the witness of the early church. To throw all that out and come up with this invention, the sons of Seth and the daughters of Cain.
I mean, that's just total conjecture. There is no historical basis. There's nothing in Scripture to give such an idea. But it's not just the early Christians who interpreted it this way. There is the ancient book of Enoch, which the early Christians believe was written by the man Enoch, and I'm going to show you in a minute why they did with good reason.
Now I'd like to just read to you some select passages from the Book of Enoch that describe this period and make it totally clear we're talking about angels here, not sons of Seth. It says this," And it came to pass when the children of men had multiplied that in those days were born unto them beautiful and comely daughters.
And the angels, the children of the heaven, saw and lusted after them, and said to one another,' Come, let us choose wives from among the children of men and beget children for ourselves.' And all the others together with them took unto themselves wives, and each chose for himself one, and they began to go in unto them and to defile themselves with them. And they taught them charms and enchantments. And they became pregnant and they bore great giants.
And Azazel, who was one of these wicked angels, taught men to make swords and knives and shields and breastplates and bracelets and ornaments. In another portion of it, it goes on to describe how some of the angels taught women the use of cosmetics, taught women and men astrology, things like that. Now, the Book of Enoch describes the sin of these angels in marrying and the giants that they produced. And this is what it says about the punishment then.
God says this," And from henceforth, you shall not ascend into heaven unto all eternity, and in chains of the earth, the decree has gone forth to bind you for all of the days of the world." And again he said," You have left the high, holy, and eternal heaven, and lain with women, and defiled yourselves with the daughters of men, and taken to yourselves wives, and done like the children of earth and begotten giants his sons.
And though you were holy, spiritual, living the eternal life, you have defiled yourselves with the blood of women and have begotten children intermingled with the blood of humans. You were formerly spiritual living the eternal life and immortal for all generations of the world. And for that reason, I did not appoint wives for you, for as the spiritual ones of the heaven, their dwelling is in heaven.
And now the giants who are produced from the spirits in 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. Now again, this is particularly fascinating because you don't read that much in the Old Testament about the demons. It's mainly in the New Testament where they come to the fore.
And yet here is a work that is written long before Christ, and yet it talks about these demons, how they are the souls of these wicked giants, and refers to them as evil spirits. And it's here in the book of Enoch that it talks about the punishment of these wicked angels who forsook their dwelling place was that they would be bound in chains. The Book of Enoch goes on to say about these evil spirits.
It says," And the spirits of the giants afflict, oppress, destroy, attack, do battle, and work destruction on the earth and cause trouble.
And these spirits shall rise up against the children of men and against the women because they have proceeded from them." And it finally says," Thus shall they destroy until the day of the consummation the great judgment in which the age shall be consummated over the watchers and the godless, yea shall be wholly consummated." Further in the book of Enoch, it goes on to describe the dark abyss in which these angels who have been chained are hurled to wait for the day of judgment.
Now once again, it's important that you realize that the early Christian understanding of the fallen angels and the origin of the demons doesn't depend upon the Book of Enoch. The evidence is solid enough there in Scripture from Genesis, from 2 Peter and from the book of Jude. Also, you should understand that the early Christians didn't include the Book of Enoch in their Old Testament canon.
On the other hand, most of them did believe that it was the genuine work of Enoch in the seventh lineage of the descendants of Adam. And it was for a very good reason that they believed this, because they had no lesser authority for this than the New Testament itself. Let me read to you from the book of Jude again, Jude verses 14 and 15.
Now Jude has just been talking about evil and wicked men, and he says this:" Now Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied about these men also saying,' Behold, the Lord comes with ten thousands of His saints, to execute judgment on all, to convict all who are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds, which they have committed in an ungodly way, and of all the harsh things which ungodly sinners have spoken against him." Now, I challenge you, go back to the book of Genesis.
Read the chapter that talks about the man Enoch, and see if you can find that prophecy there in the book of Genesis. In fact, do a search through the entire Old Testament. You won't find that prophecy anywhere. But let me read you that prophecy from another source.
And behold, he comes with ten thousands of his holy ones, to execute judgment upon all and to destroy all the ungodly, and to convict all flesh of all the works of their ungodliness, which the ungodly have committed, and of all the harsh things which ungodly sinners have spoken against Him. That's virtually word for word, what we have in the Book of Jude, but I didn't read from the Book of Jude. I was reading to you directly from the Book of Enoch, which I have right here at my hand.
So Jude was quoting a prophecy that he assumes his readers are familiar with, that they have heard read before. Accordingly, the Book of Enoch is no ordinary human work, and it's certainly no fraudulent fake book that was passed off as something authentic. I mean, how could the writer of Enoch possibly have made such a prophecy about the last days and the day of judgment, except through the Holy Spirit? So this is obviously no simple man-made work.
Furthermore, why would a New Testament writer quote from a fraudulent work and then say that it actually came from Enoch, the seventh man from Adam? Do we believe that the Bible contains errors in it? Of course not. He's quoting a prophecy he said is from Enoch, and the only place we find that written anywhere is in the Book of Enoch that we have. Now, the typical rationalization I hear so often is, oh, well, the mere fact that Jude quotes a prophecy from the book of Enoch doesn't mean that he approves of the book.
They say," Well, Paul quoted from pagan poets." But these aren't even remotely on the same level. There are only two times where Paul quoted from pagan authors. One time, he's witnessing to the pagan Greeks at the Areopagus. So he quotes from one of their works to try to open the door to witness about Jesus Christ.
He's not writing to Christians and quoting a work of some pagan poet as," Oh, this is a true prophecy about the end that you need to read." The other time is in 1 Corinthians 15:32, he said," If the dead do not rise, let us eat and drink for tomorrow we die." So he's countering the false teachers who said there is no resurrection, and he's saying," Well, if that's the case, if there's no resurrection," and then he quotes from the Greek poet Menander," Let us eat and drink for tomorrow we die." He's not teaching
that as something we should believe.
He's saying if there isn't any resurrection, then the pagans are right after all.
That's not even remotely the same as Jude quoting from a prophecy and saying," This is a true prophecy from the man Enoch." After all, what would you think if I were presenting a message about judgment on the wicked, and I quote different examples from Scripture, and then suddenly I said," And Buddha prophesied about the judgment at the end times, and then read to you something that Buddha had said." Well, your obvious reaction would be," David must believe that Buddha had some truth in him, that there's something
good there we should read." You would either write me off as somebody you don't want to listen to anymore, or you would want to go out and find a book that had more about Buddhism.
Now, the copy we have today of the Book of Enoch has perhaps not been providentially preserved in all of its passages, and maybe that's why it's not in the canon. But the angels coming to earth and marrying women is the central theme of the book. If that whole thing is a fable, then the book indeed is a phony. And there's no way it could contain a true prophecy from Enoch, the seventh man from Adam, since no such prophecy is found in the Old Testament.
The fact that it does contain a genuine prophecy that we can find in no other place, except now in the New Testament, shows that it's not an ordinary book. Obviously, Jude assumed his readers were familiar with the book, or he wouldn't have quoted from it. Or at the very least, he assumed they would go out and want to read this book that he's just quoted from.
Furthermore, in his letter, just a few verses before this, he talks about the angels who forsook their dwelling place and are being held in chains of darkness. Now obviously his readers would have connected that to the Book of Enoch that he turns around in quotes from. It's absurd to think anything else, and historically we know that is exactly what they did do.
The church connected what he said with the Book of Enoch, and they believed what the Book of Enoch said about the angels coming to earth, that this is indeed what is described in the book of Genesis. Let me ask you something else. If this book of Enoch is just some phony work that is not from the biblical man Enoch, how come it has so much accurate information about the demons and their work on earth? I mean, after all, the Old Testament says very little about the demons.
It's not until you get into the New Testament that you find this extensive teaching about demons. And yet the book of Enoch was clearly not written by some Christian because it existed long before Christ. Again, how could a fake writer writing a fraudulent work know about these wicked angels being thrown into Tartarus and bound in chains of darkness? The Old Testament teaches nothing about that.
Are we to believe that some man just making up a book actually has knowledge about something that's not revealed anywhere else? See, that's unbelievable. The Book of Enoch is certainly no phony book. As I said, we may possess a corrupted or incomplete text of it, but it's not a book that we should scoff at like it's some fraudulent work that just purports to be from the man Enoch.
Now, the only scriptural objection I ever hear when I share with people what the early Christians believed about the fallen angels and the demons is Jesus said that angels don't marry nor are given in marriage. That of course is a quote from Matthew 22:30. Let me read that to you. Jesus said," For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage." He's talking about people there, not angels, okay.
But he says," But are like angels of God in heaven." Now did Jesus in any way say that the disobedient angels in Noah's day did not possess the ability to take on human bodies and sinfully marry earthly women? No, he's not even remotely addressing that or anything like that. Rather, Jesus said that the angels in heaven do not marry. Well, we all know that. And the account in Genesis and the one in the Book of Enoch don't contradict that in any way.
In fact, the Book of Enoch states that this was the whole reason the angels came to earth, because in heaven the angels do not marry. So the wicked angels were doing something unlawful, something unnatural, and they had to come to earth to do that. They were not, quote," angels in heaven" whom Jesus refers to. Rather, they were the angels who forsook their natural abode that is spoken of in the book of Jude. Now, why should it sound strange to our ears that wicked angels could take on bodies of men and marry women?
I mean, you think of all of the supernatural things that are mentioned in the Scriptures, the creation of the earth, the flood, the Israelites crossing the Red Sea, the manna, the sun standing still for Joshua, all of those things. So how is this any different than all of the other supernatural or miraculous things we read about in the Scriptures? I mean, after all, there are numerous accounts in the Old Testament of angels appearing with human bodies.
In Genesis 18, we read about men who came to Abraham, and we know that these" men" were actually angels, and Abraham prepared food for them, and it says that they ate it. Likewise, when the angels came to Lot, and again it just describes them as men. Lot invited them into his house. He served food to them, and it says they ate. So we could make the same argument," Well, angels in heaven don't eat." And yes, I assume they don't. But when they materialize a body and are here on the earth, they can eat.
We read there in the account in Genesis 19 about Lot, that the men of Sodom wanted to carnally assault these angels. Well, I assume that they had the same anatomy as all other men that such an assault was even possible. We read in Genesis chapter 32 that Jacob wrestled with an angel, and he wouldn't let the angel go until the angel blessed him. Now, do we really think that a human is as strong as an angel, that we could wrestle one and hold them and force something out of him?
So angels are certainly capable of taking on the bodies of men and doing things that would not be normal for them in the heavenly or angelic state. So where do we think that somehow we know exactly what angels can do and can't do? The Scriptures tell us very, very little about them and about their abilities. If the Scriptures say that they took on the bodies of men and cohabited with women, I mean, why should I doubt that? I accept everything else that's in the Bible in faith.
That's certainly nothing that requires any greater faith than the other things that are outside my ordinary human experience. Well, I think the logical question now is, we've seen what the historic view of the church was on this, and the scriptural support that it had for that, as well as support from the Book of Enoch, which is not part of the canon. So where did this modern notion of the sons of Seth come from?
I mean, there's nothing suggested in the New Testament about that, nothing in the Old Testament, nowhere in Genesis. Well, the idea actually originated in the 3rd century. Not from the Church itself, but from a professing Christian named Julius Africanus. He wrote this," When men multiplied on the earth, the angels of heaven came together with the daughters of men." However, he says in some copies I find it says the sons of God.
What the Spirit means, in my opinion, is that the descendants of Seth are called the sons of God because of the righteous men and patriarchs who have sprung from him, even down to the Savior Himself. However, the descendants of Cain are named the seed of men as having nothing divine in them because of the wickedness of their race.
However, if it is thought that these refer to angels, we must take them to be those who deal with magic and sorcery, who taught the women the motion of the stars and the knowledge of things celestial. By the power of those angels, they conceived the giants as their children, by whom wickedness reached its peak on the earth. Finally, God decreed that the whole race of the living should perish in their impiety by the deluge.
Now Julius Africanus, who as far as I can tell, was the first person to put forth this theory, was no leader in the church. You've probably never heard me quote from him before. In fact, he's best known for putting forth objections to what most of the rest of the church believed. I referred to him as a professing Christian because he actually worked for the pagan emperor, Alexander Severus, and his writing is addressed to the Emperor, but it's not an apologetic for Christianity.
It's a mixture of all kinds of things. Like he gives advice to the emperor on how you can poison the water supply of a city when you're sieging it in order to take it more quickly. Not something that any authentic Christian should ever be writing. So this theory about Seth comes from a very poor source, and even he only puts it forth as a conjecture, and he presents the other view, too, that everyone else in the church believed.
Now I have not read all of the medieval writers through the century, so I don't know if anyone else picked up upon this or not. I've never read anything about it from anyone else until we get to the time of the Reformation. And then John Calvin, who fancied himself is knowing just about everything about Scripture, he writes this in his commentary on Genesis 6.
He says," The world was then as if divided into two parts, because the family of Seth cherished the pure and lawful worship of God from which the rest had fallen. It was therefore base ingratitude in the posterity of Seth to mingle themselves with the children of Cain and with other profane races, because they voluntarily deprived themselves of the inestimable grace of God. For it was an intolerable profanation to pervert and to confound the order appointed by God.
It seems at first sight frivolous that the sons of God should be so severely condemned for having chosen for themselves beautiful wives and the daughter of men. In short, Moses pointed out as the most extreme disorder when the sons of the pious, whom God had separated to Himself from others as a peculiar and hidden treasure, became degenerate. It's interesting, he says all of this, and yet Genesis 6 says nothing about that. That's pure speculation, which again he picked up from Julius Africanus.
But then he goes on to say this:" That ancient figment concerning the intercourse of angels with women is abundantly refuted by its own absurdity, and it is surprising that learned men should formerly have been fascinated by ravings so gross and prodigious." You see, that's how you successfully attack things when you don't have any facts to back up your case. You say," Oh, that's so patently absurd, of course no one would believe that." Well, I could say the same thing about Balaam's donkey talking to him.
Oh, that's so absurd. Of course no one would believe that's literal. Or how about the global flood itself or all of the other things we read about in the Scriptures? Now, if that's coming from someone who doesn't believe the account of creation in Genesis, who doesn't believe there was a literal flood, who doesn't believe that the Red Sea was miraculously parted as described in Exodus, who doesn't believe the sun stood still as described in the Book of Joshua?
Yeah, I have no problem intellectually, that is, with someone saying," Oh, that's absurd that angels could come down and marry with women." But to come from someone who believes the infallibility of Scripture, who has no trouble believing in faith all of the other miraculous and supernatural things in the Scriptures, to say that that's patently absurd, and of course it can't be believed. No, it just means John Calvin, you have no basis for what you say.
His ravings about the sons of Seth doing this and that when the Scriptures say nothing about it is far more absurd than to believe the same way the Church historically believed from the beginning. Now I want to talk for a moment about the ancient legends that support the Genesis account. Quite often, we Bible-believing Christians point to the extensive legends about a global flood among so many people groups as evidence that the Genesis flood actually did happen.
Now of course the biblical account is not simply one more of those legends. Rather, it's only logical that if such a global flood occurred, and we believe it did, that the memory of it would be retained throughout the world among various people groups, because all humans have descended from Noah. And so the flood is something in the past history of all people groups. Now, the same would be true of the rebellious angels coming to Earth.
We would expect the memory of this event to be found in the legends of people groups across the earth. Particularly since Genesis 6:4 says that the hybrid children born to the angels were the mighty men of old, men of renown. So the writer of the Genesis account assumes that his readers have heard of these men of renown. I mean, how could they be called mighty men of renown if no one had ever heard of them?
And sure enough, from India to the Middle East, from the Mediterranean world to the Nordic legends, we find stories of gods coming down from heaven and having relations with women. And from these illicit unions, giants or some other superhuman men are born. And in all of these legends that I've researched, these giants always end up being in conflict with the gods of heaven, just as were the Nephilim or the giants mentioned in the Genesis account.
We must remember that of Noah's three sons, only the Line of Shem continued to practice the true worship of God, and it was only a small minority of Shem's descendants. So the other sons had known about these heroes of old, in fact, had known of them personally, and so they carried with them the stories about them, just like they carried stories about the flood. And after the confusion of languages at Babel, then these stories were taken in many different languages throughout the earth.
Now just like the flood legends, the legends about these angels who came down to the earth don't exactly match the biblical account, but in general, they have the same basic elements. The Greek and Roman legends are probably the ones most familiar to us. In one of these legends, Uranus, which means heaven, and Gaia, which means earth, had relations together and produced a breed of superhuman men known as the Titans. And the Titans ended up warring with the heavenly gods of Olympia and were defeated.
After defeating the Titans, the gods of heaven cast them, guess where? Cast them into Tartarus. In his writings, Homer describes Tartarus as being as far beneath Hades as heaven is high above the earth. He depicts it as a dank and wretched pit engulfed in murky gloom. So when Peter wrote that God had cast the disobedient angels of Noah's Day into Tartarus, this meant something very specific to his Greek readers. And what about the mighty men of old, those of renown or of fame?
Well, so many of the mighty heroes in Greek and Roman legends are described in their stories as being born from a god who came down from heaven, took the form of a man, and cohabited with a woman. Hercules was such a hero. He supposedly had Zeus for his father and an earthly queen for his mother. Same thing was true of Ajax. He was supposed to have had a God for a father, a woman for a mother. The same thing is true of Atlas. Now to the early Christians, Hercules and Atlas weren't simply fictitious people.
No, they viewed them as no doubt having been real persons, sons of the wicked angels and daughters of men. For example, Justin Martyr wrote," The poets and mythologists did not know that it was the wicked angels, and those demons who had been begotten by them, who did the various things to men, women, cities, and nations that the poets and mythologists wrote about. So they ascribed them to God Himself and to those who were considered to be His very offspring.
For they called them by whatever name each of the angels had given to himself and to his children. So Zeus very likely was the name that an angel had given to himself. And Hercules and Atlas were very likely the names that these angels had given to the sons born to them. So when Paul wrote to the Corinthians," The things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons and not to God." The early Christians pictured this a bit differently than we often do.
You see, the Gentiles would have acknowledged that they worship demons. The Greek word daemon is a neutral word for one of the lesser gods. It did not carry the connotation of someone evil. Now we know that the demons are in fact evil, being the spirits of the wicked Nephilim or giants, the heroes of old or mighty men of renown. But to the Greeks and Romans, a demon was just a lesser god, very similar to the word genie, that in the Arabic legends can actually be a good god.
These mighty men of old, these giants born from the angels and from human wives, badly wanted the praise and adoration of humans that they had been used to receiving while they were alive on earth. So they presented themselves to the ancient races of men as benefactors. So what did these souls of the deceased giants or Nephilim do to cultivate worship from humans?
Tatian wrote," It is a practice of some men to capture persons and then to restore them to their friends for a ransom." Similarly, those who are considered to be gods invade the bodies of certain persons. Then they produce a sense of their presence by dreams. Afterward, when they have taken their fill of the things of this world, these gods command them to come forth into public. In the sight of all, they then fly away from the sick, destroying the disease which they had produced.
They thereby restore men to their former state. And several of the early Christian writers mentioned the same things, that the demons cause someone to get sick, and then they cure that illness by departing from the person when that person offers sacrifices to the gods, therefore making it look like, wow, these gods can actually heal people. Mark Felix wrote," Secretly creeping into human bodies with subtlety as being spirits, they simulate diseases, alarm the minds, and wrench about the limbs.
They do this so that they can force men to worship them. By remitting what they had bound, they seem to have cured it." Well, do we Christians need to be afraid of the demons? Well, the early Christians recognized the demons to be powerful and dangerous adversaries. However, they also knew that any Christian who was walking with God cannot be possessed by a demon. In fact, Christ has given us power over the demons.
For example, Justin Martyr wrote," We do continually beseech God by Jesus Christ to preserve us from the demons. When they are exorcised in the name of Jesus Christ, they are overcome, and thus it is demonstrated to all that His Father has given him such great power. For by virtue of this power, demons are subdued by Christ's name." Tertullian wrote," The whole power of demons and kindred spirits is subject to us. Nevertheless, ill-disposed slaves sometimes join disobedience with fear.
Such slaves delight in injuring those of whom they also stand in awe." So it is with demons. In other words, Tertullian is saying," The demons are afraid of us. At the same time, this fear is joined in with disobedience. And so if they can hurt us, they're going to do that if at all possible." Origen wrote," We don't deny that there are many demons upon earth. However, we maintain that they exist in exercise power among the wicked as a punishment for their wickedness.
But they have no power over those who have put on the whole armor of God, who have received strength to" withstand the wiles of the devil." He continues," A Christian, I mean a true Christian who has submitted to God and to His Word, that is Jesus, will suffer nothing from demons, for he is mightier than demons.
The Christian will suffer nothing, for the angel of the LORD will encamp around them who fear Him, and will deliver them." Well, in closing, let me say," Perhaps I have stretched some of you a bit this evening. You maybe have heard things you've never heard before." If that's the case, I would encourage you not to simply reject the historic understanding of the Church on this matter, only because it's something new to you.
Instead, I encourage you to be like the Bereans, to review the scriptures we've looked at, to see if these things are so. I mean, after all, do you find anything in the Scriptures about the sons of Seth marrying the daughters of Cain against the will of God? Does the New Testament ever refer to them or hold them out as an example to avoid? Or rather does the New Testament refer to disobedient angels who forsook their dwelling place in the days of Noah as an example to avoid.
Of course, understanding the origin of the demons isn't a salvation issue. So what is important from tonight's message is this: that there is a real Satan who is a fallen angel and who desires to mislead mankind, that there are real demons against whom we are at war, that both Satan and the demons do their best to present themselves as benefactors of mankind in order to deceive us, just as Satan deceived Eve in the beginning.
So as Paul admonished, let's make sure we've put on the complete suit of armor so we can properly wage war against these powers of evil.