Demons and the Fallen Angels

[veritasseeker90]

So this is a thought that came to me after some discussion with my mom.

Something I've never understood is the difference between the Fallen Angels that are locked away until their appointed time and the ones that are loose.

So my thoughts turned to the punishment laid on them when Satan rose up and the angels followed him.

The Bible says they were punished, but were they all punished the same? I mean, they had to have some SORT of freewill, yes?

But the thing I've been wondering and praying about is: are there different levels of punishment? Like the Fallen Angels locked away were the ones who said, to the effect of, "Yes, we are better than God," and then the other ones might have been bullied into it?

So it might sound like stupid question but it's one I've been wondering about and wanted to see what your thougths are?

[tris]

Good questions, Veritas.. I hadn't really thought about it before but it does bring up an interesting point.

I think the problem is trying to correlate a temporarl view of things and an eternal view of things. We know hell was established for the devil and his angels and that Satan walks about like a roaring lion.

So maybe the implication is that they are loose for a season and the final lockup is after the return of Christ.

I don't think any got bullied, and I'm not sure angels have freedom of choice. Which might make it even more heineous in God's eyes. Like a rocking chair deciding it's going to be a bed. You kind have to break the chair and then it's not good for either one.

I'll do some checking with my husband (he's a pastor) and see what he thinks.

[Divides the Waters]

The book of Enoch (quoted in Jude) indicates that the "angels that sinned" (prior to the Flood) are locked up in chains, but the spirits of their slain offspring roam the Earth seeking to torment and bruise man. This seems to have been the common understanding of the origin of evil spirits, contrary to the standard modern church answer that demons are fallen angels.

Regarding the levels of understanding we have regarding what happens on the other side of the veil, as it were, I think that we are given information on a "need-to-know" basis only. Even our details of Heaven and Hell are sketchy enough that theologians debate their exact nature to this day. I find the study of these things fascinating, but remember the line from Voyage of the Dawn Treader, where one of the characters is told that it is not theirs to know what wrongs a star can commit? I think a lot of that is applicable here. The Bible does not tell us there are no such things as aliens, or give us the exact nature of the punishment of the angels. What it does is tell God's story as it relates to Mankind, and what we are to do to get in a right relationship with Him. I daresay that if there is redemption for the rebel angels, they will have their own story, and God will still be the main character in it.

[jfranklin]

This is something I am working with as well. In Genesis (6 I believe), there is a line which states that the Sons of God took the Daughters of Man as wives. As a writer, this gives me great flexability to play with. This still begs the question, if the Sons of God are demons/fallen angels/etc, how did they get here and why so?

I play with this concept a bit in my novel. ;-)

[thewordcrafter]

Well, Revelation gives us a "flashback" as it were to the fall of Satan. Echoing passages in the Old Testament, it says they were cast out... not into hell, but onto the Earth where the battle still rages. Scripture also says that hell was PREPARED for Satan and his angels, not that they have already been assigned. Revelation does speak of certain fallen angels that are bound, but like it was said above, that may not be our story to know. And let us not forget, the numerous "casting out of demons" done by Jesus. Of this we can be certain, there are demons here on the earth and there are demons locked away. Why? I don't know.

The question of Gen. 6 is one I have studied quite thoroughly. I do subscribe to the idea of the Sons of God being fallen angels and not the Godly line of Seth. I also think that subsequent verses hint that not only were the human race perverted through marital relations with demons, but animals may have been perverted in a similar way. I'll give more details if you would like... as I said, I've studied that passage thoroughly.

[jfranklin]

Always interested in learning.

So if the fallen have been cast into Hell, how do they keep getting into Earth? Also, if the fallen ones can sire children, ... why? What were the results?

I've got a few theories that I am putting into play in my project.

Animals perverted? Do share! ;D

[thewordcrafter]

Yes... In fact, it is this idea that I subscribe to in order to explain some of the dinosaurs.

Here's the basic chronology of the beginning of Gen 6. 1) The fallen angels take human wives. 2) They have children 3) God recognizes the children as wicked. 4) God condemns them.

Obviously, the rules of what the angels could and could not do changed after the flood, along with the life-span of mankind. Suffice it to say, God changed some of the rules and wiped everything out to basically start from scratch. Follow so far? That's why we don't have a half-human half-demon race today. (This isn't spec folks! This is Bible!)

What I found fascinating is a little overlooked statement in verse 7, where God pronounces his condemnation.

The LORD said, "I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, from man to animals to creeping things and to birds of the sky; for I am sorry that I have made them."

Notice... God condemns animals and birds too!!! Why? I think it is because the demons, through a similar means perhaps, perverted them as well! You'll notice that Noah was unable to gather the animals himself, they had to be sent to him. That's because Noah could not distinguish between pure animals and perverted animals. (Dinos??)

(I think I have a paper somewhere I wrote on this.)

For other cross-reference material on the subject of these fallen angels, see Jude 6 &7, and 2 Peter 2:4 & 5, where Jude compares the activities of the fallen angels as being synonymous with Sodom and Gomorrah, and 2 Peter associates the sins of the angels directly with Noah and the flood.

[jfranklin]

Very interesting! Definitely something to mull over ....

It does give an interesting vision of God as saying, "Doh! What did I do!?!?!"

Thanks for the different perspective, Kevin.

[pixydust]

Oh, this is very interesting! The ms I'm working on right now is a dystopian-type setting, based on the idea of fallen angels. It's all very interesting to me, the whole notion of Gen 6. I love how God keeps so many things hidden so our imagination can play with them.

[jfranklin]

True. I just hope I do not offend Him, but wow! You can make some interesting stories with this!

[dizzyjam]

Not to mention the theory of a pre-Adamic race. That is, for me, very persuasive.

Here's how I heard one well-known world travelling minister put it:

Demons and Fallen Angels are two separate beings. Angels have bodies and can eat. Demons are disembodied spirits. There were several ways he showed this from scripture. Then he talked about the gap theory - even though he didn't call it that - and mentioned about the time before Adam when God had first created the Earth and how Lucifer was in charge of the planet. He chose to rebel against God and convinced a third of the angels to join him in his rebellion along with the inhabitants of Earth. Who were these inhabitants? Dinosaurs. So God brought an ice age to the planet making it "formless and void" and trapping Satan and the Fallen Angels on the planet with the now dead dinosaurs that are disembodied. He talked about how the seven days of creation were actually restoration and how Adam and Eve were not told just to increase the number of the human race but to repopulate the planet when they were told to "replenish the Earth". Then Satan was mad that God had created a race on a higher level than his and they were now in charge of the planet he had been in charge of. So he conspired against them and tricked them into taking in the forbidden fruit. According to this minister, since the demons are disembodied spirits (again he showed many examples and proof from the Bible) as opposed to the Fallen Angels which still had bodies (he used the fact that they could reproduce with human women the Nephilim race), that when Satan inhabited the serpent it was only one of three recorded instances where a Fallen Angel inhabited a body. The other two instances are when Satan entered Judas, and where he inhabits the final Anti-Christ. There were a lot of other things he had to say that tied everything together, but this was what I could remember that directly showed what he was saying about it.

So there are plenty of different ways to look at things.

[choosybeggar]

All this is very interesting, digging up an old thread about something I'm interested in already. And I shall say the word, "interesting" one more time, for good measure.

It is most certain that the demons we come in contact with every day have bodies. They can be seen with the spiritual eyes, and sometimes with our normal physical eyes as well. But I don't think that it's dinosaurs' disembodied spirits making people slither like snakes on the living room floor (real incident, demon-possession), as the minister quoted by dizzyjam implied (sort of).

I also have played with the idea of Nephilim, and their lineage. I'm not exactly competent in the doctrine of fallen angels vs. demons, but the demons I know are capable of physical interaction. They can kill you, given authority, and can possess humans. Whether they can produce offspring is beyond me. Sons of God? Possible. I'm not saying more than that. But in my book, the Nephilim, specifically the Anakim, are giants with angels in their bloodline. Good guys. I did it mostly for fun, and that elusive quality of Speculative Fiction creation. Great feeling.

I don't agree with about half of the stuff that minister said. Dinosaurs existed at the time of the flood. I'm not saying that the whole idea of Satan on Earth before Adam is bunk. Far from it. The whole idea is very intriguing, and I've thought of something like that view before. But I don't think of him and his angels as a pre-Adamic race. But I'm open to your own take on it, if you'd be kind enough to reply to my comments. The, the ice age, and the remaking/replenishing thing, I don't think of as correct. I do think that passage is referring to taking back Earth for the Kingdom, but not in the sense of living, three-dimensional beings having lived there before. We're still in the process of replenishing it, and won't be done until...the best I can think...our rule for a thousand years? Something like that. Retaking it spiritually for the Kingdom.

I'm sorry if I'm coming from an angle that's too hard to understand. I understand the physical and spirit realms as connected, more than some of you. What I've taken from several different sources:

In the physical realm, the sound we hear is a frequency. If you raise the frequency high enough, about seven hundred octaves up from "C," it turns into visible light. Seemingly totally different sensory stimulants, same scale. Go up another indefinite (as in I don't know) number of "octaves," and you get the frequency of solid objects. We, in essence, are "congealed light," to quote one of my sources. Now, go up another number of "octaves." You get four-dimensional, all the way up to Nth-dimensional objects.

At this point, you're in the spiritual realm. The simple way to say it, is spirits are just the "same" as physical entities, just on a higher dimension. They can interact with us, by limiting themselves to our level of working, but we can't really go up to their level. (Good thing, with God able to hear us, and do what we let Him, but we can't tell Him what to do.) So spirits DO have bodies, just a little different than ours. The difference between demons and fallen angels...ehh...I'm not going to try and say anything about that just now. I never really thought about the possibility before today. But there does seem to be something, there....

Anyway! Hope this revives a dead thread. If it doesn't...oh, well. No harm done. Plus, I get another post to my name! Ranking up from newbie to junior member shall be a treat.

Hi to all you folks!

[newburydave]

Hey Choosy:

You've got some heavy speculation going on there Bro.

My wife is a Physics teacher so she's talked about this stuff. I'm a statistician by training so I've played with some of those ideas myself.

Re: Solid light
Never heard it put that way before. Nobody totally understands this stuff, it's out beyond the edge of actual scientific investigation because it's really hard to measure (for a lot of reasons). Suffice to say that when you're measuring the hairy edge of nothing you have to be careful or you'll confound your measuring "media" with what you're trying to measure.

In a nutshell this is what I think I've gleaned.

Light is both an electromagnetic waveform and a discrete particle, both at the same time unless you measure it. When you measure it, it conforms to what ever test you use, so as to act like either an Em wave or a particle. Yes you read that right, human cognition interracts with, and determines, the way "objective" "physical" reality behaves.

Physical objects are made up of submicroscopic particles known as molecules, atoms and subatomic particles that have measurable mass (like light does when it's decided to act like a particle) and all but the Neutrons have an electronic charge.

We measure them indirectly and apply Heisenbergs Indeterminacy principle liberally (ie. you can't know the velocity and the mass of a particle at the same time, you can only measure one or the other).

Now before you go writing science fiction or Buddhist dogma to explain that one, this is a mathematically observed effect. Why is not scientifically known, we just know that's how it works. The why is up to Theologians and Sf writers. ;D

All particles, even big ones like you, me and the table have a "location probability density function" (ie. a normal curve) to describe where they "really" are. This probablity function varies inversely with the particles size. For very small particles, (ie quarks) the uncertainty region is very large ( and it could be anywhere in that reigon, we don't know), for large particles (ie. your house) it is very small, like say a fraction of an Angstrom (diameter of a carbon atom).

Oh by the way, the researchers who try to measure such things have concluded that the smallest particles, from which all the others are built, are made up of (drum roll please). . . NOTHING.
HUH! did you say--
That's right, NOTHING.

HMMM, so that means. . .

;D How about God created the universe out of nothing and then sustains it moment by moment by the word of his Power (aka, Jesus)

You mean it's all made out of nothing but breath?
.
Ah. . . Yeah; God's breath (Phneuma=Spirit). After all He spoke the worlds into being. So think about it. Even Satan is made up of God breath stuff. Talk about an Incredible soveriegn will and purpose. Gods words alone, just by themselves, are so weighty as to be of eternal substance.


I give up!
.
;D Good cause you can't win. Now have you ever heard of the sinners prayer . . . ( and another unbelieving skeptic comes to Jesus.)

Ahhh Okay, where were we.

======
Oh Yeah, the nature of things and stuff...

(Do you have a headache yet? )

This leads me to "dave's unified field theory about the nature of everything in the created universe". (please hold your applause until I get done, thank you.)

Everything is just super-positions of multinomial probability waves that are continuously generated within the mind of God.

(Uh, what did he say?)
(Dunno, I don't speak french.)

(He said it's all done with statistics, which is way harder to understand than french.)

(oh, I guess.)

That means God is thinking about everything that can be and where those Probability Thoughts of his cross, something (you, me, a cockroach, the world, etc.) exists in time and space. If you happen to be Soveriegn, Omnipotent, Omniscient etc etc. it's easy.

PS. He never forgets anything either. That would be very bad, catastrophic really, for the thing, or person, forgotten. (Like nonexistant baby!)
Oh, right, He forgets our sins, doesn't He? ;D

Corrolary:

When He changes what He's thinking about, it all changes. (like folding up an old worn out garment and making it new)

NOw where did I hear that before?

Oh yeah, in the Bible.

(FWIW, I think God's house, is the place where dimensionality is infinite.)

It took me years of studying the Bible, walking with God, Probability and Statistics, and Physics & technology to come up with that concise () statement, so your mileage may vary.

But maybe something I wrote might give you some ideas. Science isn't the thing that counts, The Story is the thing.

So Write on Bro. Write well.

SGD
dave

[choosybeggar]

Yeah. The very, very concise theory, I hope, is that we're all made of the same stuff. I think that pretty much sums it up. God-thought...frequencies of wave-functions, or something like that. God projects His thoughts into, well, thoughts, which are visible to our eyes as objects, shadows, light, and what not. The higher dimensions can still be seen with our higher-dimension senses. I'm not sure if we have five spiritual senses, but it seems to be fairly close. Sadly, some people haven't turned their spiritual senses on.

What's FWIW mean? Yeah, I already knew you had that idea, of infinite dimensionality. I've been reading up on the old threads in the Anomalous Readings section. Pretty cool!

In review, there's about as many ways to look at the universe as there are facets of it. Scientific, hands-on, intra-extra, Eastern, and a few others, all talking about the same stuff. But what I was able to understand of your explanation, which was most, though maybe not all, is about the best I've seen to include just about everything. At this point, the details almost become inconsequential. If God thinks it, it is. That's about as good a summary of the universe as any. God would be--ahem!--is proud of you.

Statistics and Physics, eh? My mom was a statistician, and I'm taking Physics in school, and out of school. Nice to know I've got a fellow intellectual conversationalist here. It's always fun to talk about things that a little esoteric, and then realize later that they're REALLY esoteric, when you're trying to explain them to someone your age. (My age being that of the people who hate being in school.) And you're definitely on a level higher than I.

Looking forward to more brain-stimulating discussions in the future!
Choosybeggar