(00:06) Stephanie: Season 4, episode 11. Hello, Father.
(00:10) Marcus: Hello, Daughter. Yeah, it’s good to be back on the trail, as we say.
(00:11) Stephanie: Good to be with you.
(00:17) Stephanie: Always, always. And this week is our epic event on Saturday, November 8th: “Your Bible, Your Brain and You” with Dr. Jim Wilder, Dr. Marcus. Very excited for that. Do you want to give a quick invite to yourself there?
(00:35) Marcus: Anytime I get a chance to have a conversation with Jim Wilder, it’s bound to be interesting, right? So I’m going to be leading in with things about worldview and filters and how some people are like, well, isn’t the Bible alone enough? And the answer is theoretically yes.
But the answer is also we approach the Bible with filters and we need to recognize what those filters are or we can actually come away with the wrong perspective on things. So part of what we’re trying to do is look at how brain science has helped us remove some of the filters that can blind us from some of the things the Bible is pretty clearly teaching. So it should be an interesting conversation.
(01:21) Stephanie: Very, and if I didn’t mention it already, it’s a name your own price online event. So yes, come one, come all. Bring some friends, bring your church, whatever. I’m excited. Well, today we are continuing our spiritual warfare topic. Last week we were talking about the throne room of God. And this week we’re talking about the kingdom of darkness. So, light topic.
(01:49) Marcus: Yeah, our specialty – light, light topics.
(01:53) Stephanie: Yeah. So let’s set up our umbrella for this episode, this chapter. Is there a context that you want people to approach the Kingdom of Darkness topic with?
(02:06) Marcus: Yeah, so we’re going to talk about origins and we’re going to talk about the Old Testament and New Testament. Like, what do we need to know about the origins of the kingdom of darkness? What is the Old Testament kind of portrayal of it and how has that expanded on in the New Testament? That’s sort of where we’re going.
(02:24) Stephanie: Alright, origins of the kingdom of darkness. Give me the lore.
(02:28) Marcus: So yes, the lore as it is, is that, first of all, what’s important to understand is that the Kingdom of Darkness did originate. And that’s important because once again, it gets us back to this yin-yang idea that good and evil are not eternal opposites. I like the way C.S. Lewis explains this, and that is that evil is always the corruption of a good. That there is no such thing as ultimate evil or total evil because existence itself is something good.
And so you have to when you find great evil, you will always find the corruption of a good. So for example, some of those evil people were truly courageous, right? It took a lot of courage to do the things they did. They just did very evil things with their courage. And so you look at this idea that it does have an origin and that helps us understand that it is also going to have an end. And those are two important things to remember about the kingdom of darkness is that it originated and it is going to end.
And that is the good news of the gospel – that the kingdom of darkness has been defeated at the cross, has been disarmed. And that because of this, we are on a trajectory to the end of a war. And that war will end when this present evil age is finished and Christ returns to set things right.
(03:57) Stephanie: That’s amazing. Hallelujah. Praise the Lord. What do we need to know? But aside from that very important detail, it had a start and we’ll have a finish. What do we need to know about the origins?
(04:10) Marcus: So there are two main origin stories that are in competition with each other. And so I want to say this about these origin stories that when it comes to actually dealing with demons, you don’t need to know the origin story, right? I know people who embrace both of these or either – like how do I say this correctly? I know people embrace both of these…
(04:30) Stephanie: You know people on both sides of this very issue.
(04:32) Marcus: …There you go. That’s what I’m trying to say.
(04:34) Stephanie: People who hold to each one and are still very effective in their ministry. Yeah.
(04:38) Marcus: Exactly. So that’s the first thing I [want] people to know is that the origin story isn’t determinative on whether or not the spiritual warfare principles we teach work. But I think it’s helpful for people to know. There is what I call the John Milton origin story, Paradise Lost. And then there is the Enoch origin story that again was popularized by Michael Heiser.
So the John Milton Paradise Lost story generally goes like this, and that is that God and the angels were living happily in the spirit realm when God decided to create the universe and decided not just the universe but decided to turn the planet Earth into a garden planet and put people on there.
And the way this story goes is that Satan saw the plans for humans or actually saw the humans. and said, no, no, no, no, right? I am not going to be a servant to these humans because it says in Hebrews, are not all angels ministering servants sent to serve? So this is like the original sin of pride caused Lucifer to say, I am not going to serve them. It’s better to be a king in hell than to serve in heaven.
And so the origin story is of a fall of a third of the angels – either before the creation of the world or during the Garden of Eden is usually where it’s placed, and that the number of a third comes from one verse and that is Revelation 12, I believe it’s four, where it says that the dragon swept a third of the stars from the sky.
Now, this is the narrative or the story I grew up with. This is the one I was taught, ICBC, back when that was the standard thing that was taught. And so, we had very effective ministry taking place by a lot of people who embraced [this narrative].
(06:56) Marcus: You know, [that’s] what I would call the Milton view of the fall of the angels. Then you have the Enoch view, which is interesting because Enoch is building off of Genesis six, where it says the sons of God, you know, basically lusted after the daughters of men and took them as wives. And the result was Nephilim, which is translated into the Septuagint as giants.
And so we get this idea that something seems to be going on here beyond just human marriage if giants are being produced, right? So Enoch unpacks this in great detail and says there were actually 200 Watchers, which would be a high ranking spirit being, that formed a pack and came down to Mount Hermon in northern Israel on the border with Syria.
And they [the Watchers] entered into a pact that they were going to take wives and they were going to have children. And it ended in judgment and catastrophe, but they did give birth to giants. You’re like, well, what does this have to do with the origin of demons? Well, when God finally steps in to judge them, part of their judgment is the flood, and that he’s sending the flood to kind of wipe this hybrid race off of the earth. And also that what they did was a catalyst to spread evil throughout the world, which is why God stepped in with the flood judgment.
But the giants themselves, right, the Nephilim themselves, were hybrids. They were the product of heavenly beings and earthly beings. And so their judgment was that their spirits or their souls would be trapped to roam the earth until the final judgment. So they weren’t sent to Tartarus [a deep, dark abyss from Greek mythology] like some angels were. They weren’t imprisoned in Hades, but their spirits were confined on earth. And because of that, they’re looking for bodies to inhabit. That’s kind of the idea. So that’s an origin story.
(09:18) Marcus: That’s the Enoch origin story and Michael Heiser again, in a lot of his books, has really popularized that. I think even the Bible project has kind of gotten on board with Heiser’s interpretation and this view of where demons come from and that this is where wicked spirits originate. So I will say once again. Academically, I probably lean Heiser’s direction as having something to it. I don’t think it’s the whole story, but I do think there’s something going on there.
I’ve become convinced that the third of an angel’s falling isn’t correct, because if you look at Revelation 12 closely, that event is not happening before the foundation of the world. It’s not happening back in Eden days. But again, I don’t think it matters which of those origin stories you embrace, or if it’s something else in terms of the practicality of whether or not we actually do have authority over demons as Christians.
But I just want to get it out there because a lot of people are curious, like am I a Heizer fan or am I a traditionalist when it comes to these things? And I’m like, I am very intrigued by a lot of the things that Heizer has to say. I take him seriously. He’s done good scholarly work to get where he’s at.
(10:06) Stephanie: Practicality.
(10:29) Stephanie: Yeah, no, that was a very nice summary of both things and I’ve always appreciated that you do your own work, you’re not, you know, spoon-fed as mom would say. You do your own work but also you listen to, you know, like, oh, what’s your position? Let me hear it, let me do my own study and come to terms with it. So thank you for laying those out. So you were talking about the origins and then we’re going to look at the kingdom of darkness in the Old Testament.
(11:01) Marcus: Yes, so the kingdom of darkness in the Old Testament, you might think, you know, what is the biggest sin in the Old Testament? And clearly the sin that brings the greatest judgment is idolatry. It’s the reason Israel went into exile. It’s the number one commandment. No other gods besides me, you know, no idols in your worship. Idolatry is like the ultimate crime against Yahweh. And you’re like, well, why? And it’s because you’re replacing him, the creator king, with something else. And God’s like, I will not tolerate that. And so idolatry is where we see spiritual warfare the most in the Old Testament.
And then into the New Testament even, especially with the apostle Paul’s mission to the Gentile nations. He is invading enemy territory. He is invading these nations that have been ruled by these, you know, the gods of the nations and the idols of the world. And so he very much paints his ministry in spiritual warfare language and spiritual warfare terms as he says, that evangelism is an act of war in which you are tearing down strongholds and you are entering enemy territory and you are taking, taking back ground from the enemy.
So that all begins with this idea of idolatry and that spiritual warfare in the Old Testament is largely involved with the idea that in worshiping these gods, people are worshiping spirits that they are not supposed to be worshiping. And in the New Testament, it makes it very clear, it names those spirits demons, all right? It’s the Greek word daimon, right? Demon.
And so that’s why Paul says the people worshiping these gods are worshiping demons and I don’t want you to be having koinonia or fellowship with demons. And so that kind of ties those things together. What we don’t see in the Old Testament is Satan presented as the king of the kingdom of darkness, which is kind of interesting. We do read about Satan in the book of Job and he shows up in a couple of other places, Zechariah.
(13:24) Marcus: But we don’t have this, you know, fully built out picture. There’s a lot of things that aren’t in the Old Testament that you have to read the New Testament and then kind of connect the dots. For example, the Old Testament doesn’t talk about going to heaven when you die, right? There’s only one passage or a couple of passages that really talk about resurrection. and eternal life and things like that.
It’s very interesting the things we assume are there because we’re so New Testament literate. And so as we unpack that, one of the things we find is that to fully understand the Old Testament, really, at a scholarly level, we need to understand the ancient Near East and the worldview of the nations that surrounded Israel. And honestly, we don’t have time to unpack that. But it is one of the reasons why Heizer has been so popular.
(14:19) Stephanie: Would love for you to linger there just a moment though because we just got off of a whole series where we were talking about literary angles on Bible study, and would you talk about this understanding of the ancient Near East side of things?
(14:35) Marcus: Yeah, so the ancient Near East, for example, archaeologists discovered in, believe it was U-’gar-it, or ‘U-gar-it, however you want to pronounce that, the pile of clay tablets that included a lot of information about Baal. Now we know about Baal from the Bible, but we don’t actually know the story of Baal from the Bible. The Bible doesn’t unpack for us a lot of things about it.
So we go outside of the Bible to archaeology to learn that Baal was a storm god and that there is a whole mythological story about Baal. And what’s fascinating is that this story has a high god named El and who has children with Asherah and these sons of God become a divine council and they are ruling the world and they fight with each other and they fight with El and they fight and then these round of gods has children and there it gets really complicated.
You begin to see that there are wars in the heavenly realms in this Baal narrative and so what that does is, understanding things like that is interesting, because then you go to Egypt and you see that they have the same kind of stories there. They have a high creator who has children. These children form something like a divine council. They’re at war with each other. And it’s just interesting how many parallels there are.
And so understanding that the original readers of the Old Testament would have been very familiar with these stories, very familiar with this worldview, helps us to understand that what the Bible is doing is correcting that worldview. And it is –
(16:31) Stephanie: It’s the lens to true mythology.
(16:33) Marcus: Yes, it is a lens to true mythology saying, okay. And so there is a place for understanding that. And I would put that into the translation process like, do we understand what the words are here properly? What was the author having in his mind when he wrote this? And understanding the culture of the day can really make a big difference with that.
(16:39) Stephanie: Section.
(16:56) Stephanie: Mm-hmm. We can say more on idolatry and all of that, but let’s move on into the New Testament and then zoom back out.
(17:05) Marcus: So in the New Testament, we have a much more fully developed view, particularly of Satan as like the head of this kingdom of darkness, right? That is not made clear in the Old Testament, but in the New Testament, he’s called the prince of this world. He’s called the god of this age, right? He’s clearly the head of the whole thing.
And there’s a fully developed theology of Satan already in the New Testament that’s pretty consistent that we don’t get in the Old Testament. And you’re like, well, where did that come from? And if you look at intertestamental literature, you can see that there was a development in the thinking that came as people pondered what the Old Testament did have to say and began to understand it more clearly.
And then Jesus shows up and you get this interesting thing where the demons recognize him and they’re like, what are you doing here? Right? what is going on because they all know that they have a limited period of time until a final judgment by the king Yahweh is going to happen. And they’re like, are you here to judge us before our time? You know, this isn’t supposed to happen yet. You know what’s going on? And so they were genuinely right, genuinely confused.
And Paul picks up on this. He said, if the rulers of this age had known, they would never have crucified the Lord of glory because if they had known what God’s ultimate plan was and that he was going to bring salvation to the whole world through the death of his son on the cross.
And so you get this interesting glimpse into the kingdom of darkness that they don’t know everything, right? That they are not omnipotent. They are running the nations and to the extent that Satan can be called the God of this age and the Prince of the world. Even in the temptations of Jesus, we see this, where Satan says to Jesus in one of the temptations, now, worship me and I will put you over all the nations. I’ll give them to you. And Jesus doesn’t say, you can’t do that. You know, you don’t have…
(19:25) Marcus: And I think one of the reasons he [Jesus] doesn’t rebut him is that Satan was actually the ruler of the nations at that point. And one of the things that Jesus did at the cross was he disarmed him of the right to all of these nations. And so Jesus could say that all authority in heaven and earth has been given to me. And in saying that, he is a direct warfare challenge against Satan who was claiming that he had all authority over all of these nations. And Jesus is like, nope.
(19:25) Stephanie: Yeah.
(19:51) Marcus: It’s now mine. It belongs to me. I want it rightfully on the cross. I want it through the resurrection. It belongs to me. And now he tells his disciples, he says, so you have full authority to go into all of the nations and make disciples like they don’t belong to the devil. They don’t belong to the kingdom of darkness anymore. They belong to me. Let’s go take them back. And that’s what we’ve been doing ever since. And you have to understand the work of world missions and evangelism in that warfare context that that’s largely what’s happening there.
And so most of what we learn about spiritual warfare in the Bible and even in the New Testament is in this missionary, evangelistic context. And it’s one of the reasons why we don’t see a lot in the New Testament about Christians and demons, because the primary focus of spiritual warfare is about this taking back the nations and reclaiming them because Jesus is now the rightful king. And so, what we do then is we take the principles that come out of that context and we apply them back to what happens with Christians and demons because it isn’t just spelled out quite as clearly in the New Testament as the evangelistic context is.
(21:04) Stephanie: Mm-hmm. man, so much around my brain is trying to go off and I’m like thinking about all these things like no, okay. Stay focused, stay focused because there’s so much good here to think about and it’s truly epic, so man. All right. So I wanted to circle back to tie all of this back into the last episode and talk about the throne room and divine council and now that we kind of established that and we’ve talked about the kingdom of darkness, can you kind of bring those things together into our worldview here?
(21:37) Marcus: So the Kingdom of Darkness is in rebellion against the throne, but it doesn’t make them completely autonomous because they are still under the authority of the king and they are only able to exist because he has decreed that they are allowed to exist. And again, the good news is that that isn’t going to last forever. A judgment day is coming, and the lake of fire was prepared for that judgment day to get rid of the devil and his angels.
And so we are looking at the kingdom of darkness as something that is very real, that is something that hates God is working furiously to stop world missions and evangelism, working furiously to subvert the church in every way that it can, to subvert Christians from living an effective Christian life.
And I like the way my father said it, being a World War II veteran, you know, himself, he said, you learn as a soldier that the most important thing is to know your commanding officer and their desires. But the second most important thing is to know your enemy. And the same is true in the Christian life. Like the first priority is to know God and to trust God and to follow him. But the second thing is probably [to] know your enemy and understand what you’re up against and understand what the strategies are. And that’s one of the reasons we take the time to dive into these things.
(23:15) Stephanie: Yeah, so, given this idea of idolatry and gods of the nations and given the idea of, we got more clarity on Satan as being the head of the kingdom of darkness, what does that all look like now? And then Christ had victory on the cross and Christus Victor [Christ the Conqueror] theology and all that. We don’t have to unpack Christus Victor right now, but I think we’re talking about incarnation next episode and all of that too and atonement later.
(23:41) Marcus: Yeah, well we’ll get to the idea of what Christ did at the cross, but it is a little confusing at first because you’re like, well if Jesus really defeated Satan at the cross, right, why is Satan still so powerful? Why is the kingdom of darkness still have so much activity? And the answer is that in a nutshell, that at the cross, Jesus retook the title of God of this age, and prince of the world, if you will, and the ruler of all things.
So it [the world] was his rightfully as the Son of God who created all things, and he reclaimed it and won it in battle, so to speak, at the cross. And now what we’re doing is, on the basis of the victory won at the cross, we are engaging in warfare against the king of darkness. And now we do it from a totally different foundation and a totally different position as victors in Christ. It doesn’t mean that it’s going to be easy and it doesn’t mean that they are less powerful. It just means that their doom is sealed and a new level of authority has been given to Christ. We can unpack it further in later episodes, but [that’s it] in a nutshell.
(24:58) Stephanie: Sounds good. Well, thank you everybody for being on the trail with us. It is always a joy to be here with you and we are also looking forward to that conference with Jim Wilder at the end of the week. Hope to see you there. Father, would you like to give any final thoughts for this episode?
(25:18) Marcus: Well, again, it’s a big topic, Kingdom of Darkness, right? I would just say this, that the good news here is that we don’t have to be afraid. There’s a difference between being cocky and not being afraid. And we don’t strut around like the Kingdom of Darkness doesn’t matter. But what we do is we are not afraid that if God calls us to this, that He is going to be with us in what we go into.
And I think that It’s important for us to understand that one of things we get as we dive deeper into how spiritual warfare works is we understand the security of our position in Christ, the authority that it gives us, and the reason that we can live our lives in peace and without fear, even though we have an enemy who is seeking to do us harm. And so that’s why we need to unpack all of these things, understand how it works.
(26:15) Stephanie: God is good. I’m excited to continue this conversation. Thank you, Father.
