NT Framework - Angels and The Hidden War

A story about angels is never just a story about angels. It’s a story about how the unseen shapes what we call “real life” and why the gospel keeps meeting resistance the moment it starts setting people free.

More information about Beyond the Walls, including additional resources can be found at www.beyondthewalls-ministry.com 

This series included graphics to illustrate what is being taught, if you would like to watch the teachings you can do so on Rumble (https://rumble.com/user/SpokaneBibleChurch) or on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtV_KhFVZ_waBcnuywiRKIyEcDkiujRqP).

Jeremy Thomas is the pastor at Spokane Bible Church in Spokane, Washington and a professor at Chafer Theological Seminary. He has been teaching the Bible for over 20 years, always seeking to present its truths in a clear and understandable manner. 

Transcript

Reformation And Angelic Reality

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Beyond the Walls with Jeremy Thomas and our series on the New Testament framework. Today, the full lesson from Jeremy Thomas. Here's a hint of what's to come.

SPEAKER_01 0:10

The gospel is going out and people are getting justified that doctrine of justification by faith. And they're being set free, you know. Or by grace are you saved through faith, right? And then what quickly followed on the heels of the Reformation? So what the original reformers were saying is that hey, if you if you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, you are legally declared righteous and you are viewed by him as perfect in his sight. And the Roman Catholic said, No, we can't let that doctrine get out. So how are we going to combat that doctrine?

SPEAKER_00 0:49

Angels are so much more than just simple guardians of every believer, watching over little children or the aged and infirm. They are messengers of God, interpreters of prophecy, agents working on his behalf, directly intervening in history to fulfill God's word. Sometimes we see them acting consistent with his will in a good way, and surprisingly, consistent with his will for a negative outcome, or at least something that we would see as negative. How does this work? What are they doing? And what is the purpose and work of angels? Well, it is many fold, and today Jeremy is going to look at many aspects of this important topic.

Ascension Session And Judgment Salvation

Angels As Covenant Court Witnesses

Ahab And The Deceiving Spirit

SPEAKER_01 1:42

This is a continuation of our discussion about angels a couple weeks ago. The way this all gets involved is we've been talking about the ascension and session. The ascension is the event that happens 40 days after the death of Christ on the cross. And then he passes through the heavens and he takes his seat at the right hand of the Father in what is called the session. And so as we move through the 22 or so major events of the Bible, we've come to this very major event, the ascension and session. And after this, we'll talk about the origin of the church on the day of Pentecost in Acts chapter 2. But before we can get to that, we have to continue dealing with the doctrinal truths that come out of this significance of his ascension to this position as he takes his session at the right hand of the Father. And the main doctrine, of course, is the doctrine of judgment salvation. This is an old doctrine that we know from the Old Testament, taught both at the flood and at the Exodus. Whenever God is judging, he's also saving. And this is obviously very well illustrated by an event like the flood, where those on the ark are being saved, those off the ark are being judged. It's also illustrated well by the Exodus plagues, in which, of course, there were those who were being judged, the Egyptians, and those who were being saved, the Israelites. And so this is a repeated truth. Whenever we have a repeated truth, God is trying to really nail something into our thick souls. And we see this truth again now in the ascension and the session. And this truth always has five subcategories, and they are an acronym, GO PAM or GOMAP, or whatever. But grace, okay, before judgment, there's always grace before judgment, right? One way of salvation. There's always one way of salvation. There's not multiple plans of salvation, there's just one way. And then we've got the P, that's perfect discrimination. When God judges and saves, nobody who's saved gets caught up in the judgment, and nobody who's unsaved gets saved. You know, it doesn't work like that. It's a perfect discrimination. And then appropriation by faith. In other words, what is the response that God is looking for from man? It's just faith. It's always faith. It's not faith plus I got baptized. It's not faith plus I committed my life to Jesus Christ. It's not faith plus I said a prayer. It's not faith plus I promise to live a better life or anything like that. It's definitely not faith plus works, or it's not a faith that works. It's faith in certain content that God has revealed. And it's always appropriated by faith, this one way of salvation. And so, and then lastly, whenever God judges and saves, both man and nature are judged and saved. Now, we usually think of salvation and judgment in terms of man because we tend to think of ourselves, personal salvation. Where is am I personally saved or not? But nature is also involved. And of course, this is obvious that's a flood, right? It wasn't just Noah and his family on the ark, it was Noah, family, and what? Animals, two of each kind that had the breath of life. So God was interested in also saving the animal kingdom. And then, of course, there was judgment on those that were not on the ark, both of man and of nature. Same thing in the Exodus. It's no surprise, right? When we read those plagues, uh that which fell on the Nile, that which affected the agricultural production. Now, these are all judgments that were taking place both on man and nature. So when we come to this doctrine and we think about its implications in Christ's ascension and session, we look not only at its implications for man, but also for nature. When he was on the cross, it was dark for three hours. There was an earthquake. These are repercussions for nature. And there was also judgment on one aspect of nature that's not often classified as nature, but that's angels, which I've classified as a part of nature, and I've given you reasons for that in the past. But they have to fit somewhere in the scheme, and this is the best place. In fact, most of the times you see a picture of an angel in the Bible, they sound like they're parts of animals put together. They have all these eyes, they have wings, they have a face like a lion, or things like that. Uh very interesting. So they're classified basically as nature, and somehow they're closely associated with nature. And things like the wind, they're called spirit beings, which is the Hebrew ruach, from which we get wind or breath. And this is not circumstantial. This is on purpose because just as wind, we don't see where it comes from, we don't know where it goes, right? But we see the effects of it, so it is with angels. We don't see them, but we see the effects of them. And this is why I said last week or made a proposition a couple weeks ago, that you cannot write a history of the world that's accurate if it does not include angels. And that's because angels impact our history. And so we spent some time in the early chapters of Genesis looking at the pre-flood impact of angels on history. Um, they were placed at the entrance to the garden with the sword, right? That was quite visible to people that lived in that time. It was quite obvious to them that angels impacted history. Also, the story of the sons of God coming into the daughters of men in Genesis 6, which I've given you some elaborated notes on that this week. If you ever want these notes, just give me your email and I'll send you notes. Um, so there's impact of angels on pre-flood history. Today we want to pick up with the impact of angels on Israel's history, which is most of the Old Testament period. Um, first of all, oops, this is not the right slide. This slide. Angels were witnesses. Let's turn to Deuteronomy 32.1. Angels were witnesses to the Mosaic covenant that was made at Mount Sinai. Remember, God made a covenant with Israel, sometimes called the Sinatic covenant because it's made at Sinai or the Mosaic covenant, because Moses was the leader of Israel. But in making that covenant and God giving them various laws to be administered by the priestly house of Israel, because this was a legal covenant, a treaty that he was making with Israel, there were witnesses to the treaty, so that both God's actions relative to his conditions in the covenant, his obligation to the covenant, and Israel's obligations to the covenant could be observed by certain, let's just say, onlookers at this time. Deuteronomy 32, verse 1 discusses, and most people read right by this because they don't think anything of it. Give ear, O heavens, and let me speak, and let the earth hear the words of my mouth. Okay, and then he goes into the Song of Moses, which is basically like the national anthem of Israel, and it prophesies their entire future. One author said that this chapter is the key to Bible prophecy. So, not the book of Daniel, surprisingly, but that this chapter in the Bible is the key to all Bible prophecy, which is very interesting. It sketches Israel's future. And now we're still watching this, right? Today, we're watching what God is doing in the Middle East. We're watching to see what God is setting up. And if you want to trace the whole story all the way back, you can go back to this song of Moses. But notice he's in verse 1, he is calling the witnesses of this covenant. And so when he says, Give ear, O heavens, he's saying, Listen, O heavens, and let me speak, and let the earth hear the words of my mouth. So heavens and earth are involved as far as the witnesses are concerned, the other nations that surrounded Israel, but the heavens, who dwells in the heavens? But the angels. The angels. So the angels were set up as the witnesses to this covenant that God made with Israel. And the good thing about the angels being the witnesses is since angels don't die, they can watch the whole future of Israel and their involvement with Yahweh, right? They can watch this relationship. Turn to Isaiah. Do I have Isaiah 1? Isaiah 1, verse 2. Stephen speaks of this in his speech too. He says to the people that were about to stone him, that God ordained the law through angels. And that's because they were the witnesses there. But Isaiah chapter 1, verse 1 and 2. The prophets that come after Moses, they're like God's prosecuting attorneys. Whenever Israel broke the covenant, God would raise up a prophet, the prophet would go and serve as his prosecuting attorney. And he's bringing a case against Israel. And he's saying, Hey, you guys have broken the law, and then they'll call forth the witnesses. So you have the vision being described in verse 1, and then notice verse 2 where God's indictment begins through Isaiah. And who does, who does, who is summoned at the opening of the case? Listen, O heavens, and hear, O earth. See exactly what we saw in Deuteronomy 32, 1. And the reason is because he's calling the angels to actually serve as witnesses to Israel's violation of the Mosaic covenant. So angels serve this function between God and their his relationship with Israel, established at Mount Sinai. Interestingly, just as a side note, Revelation chapter 2 and 3, you know those two chapters have the seven letters to the seven churches. And there are seven angels, it says, who have, you know, of the seven lampstands. And these letters are addressed to these angels. And some think that those are actually really angels that serve a same type of witness function between Christ and his church. I think Robbie Dean gave a paper on it years ago at the pre-trip conference. I think he held that they were angels. Other people say, no, the angel's a messenger, it's a pastor, you know, this kind of thing. But but it's a it's a very uh provocative idea that they are actually angels, that those seven letters are written to, and that somehow angels have a relationship to local churches and the ministry that transpires there. So um it's a it's an option that's on the table, and this is the background for that option. Okay, the angelic witnesses to Israel and God's relationship under the Mosaic Covenant. Um let's turn to 1 Kings 22. Very interesting scene here, 1 Kings chapter 22, where we have a fallen angel that is uh goes forth to influence a political king, the king of Israel at the time, who was Ahab. And we learn some interesting things about angels on this in this chapter. The problem here was the area that had really belonged to Israel had been taken over by the Arameans, and so King, King Ahab, who you know, wicked King Ahab, right, had a lovely wife named Jezebel. Anyway, not many people name their daughter Jezebel. Have you ever noticed that? It's like naming your kid Cain or something, you know. But in this chapter, you know, the king, King Ahab, wants to go and take back Ramoth Gilead from the Arameans, and so he calls forth, you know, 400 prophets. And these 400 prophets say, Oh, you know, what does the Lord say? Oh, the Lord says you're gonna be successful, you know. Go take it, you know. And the other king, the king of Judah, says to his name was Jehoshaphat, he said, Hey, did you do we have a real prophet of the Lord here? He says, Yeah, there's this one guy named Micaiah, but I hate him because everything he says is always against me. So who wants to hear what he says? He says, Well, let's let's bring him forward. So in 22, um so is when he comes in. Then the messenger who went to summon Micaiah, this supposedly prophet who's always against Ahab, spoke to him, saying, Behold, now the words of the prophets are uniformly formally favorable to the king. Please let your word be like the word of one of them and speak favorably. You know, just just just say what everybody else said. I mean, come on. But Micaiah said, As the Lord lives, what the Lord says to me, that's what I shall speak. I'm not here to just get on the bandwagon. I'm gonna say exactly what the Lord says. And if if you like it, you like it. And if you don't, tough cookies. When he came to the king, the king said to him, Micaiah, shall we go to Ramoth Gilead to battle, or shall we refrain? And he answered him, and now you have this is uh sarcasm. Okay. Go up and succeed, and the Lord will give it into your into the hand of the king. Now it's just total sarcasm, and the king knows that. The king said to him, How many times must I jure you to speak to me nothing but the truth in the name of the Lord? And he said, Okay, so fine. You really want to hear the truth? This is what I saw. So now he's gonna give him the real scoop. No more sarcasm. I saw all Israel scattered on the mountains like a like sheep with which have no shepherd. And the Lord said, These have no master. Let each of them return to his house in peace. And what that's a prophecy of is that Israel's king, Ahab, is gonna be killed. They're gonna be like sheep without a shepherd, because their king's gonna be killed. And the Arameans are not going to, you know, track down the rest of the Israelis, they're just gonna go back to their home in peace. So they're gonna be defeated. That's the point. They're gonna be defeated and their king's gonna be killed. He says, This is, you should not go up, I mean, unless you want to die, right? And then verse 18, the king of Israel said to Jehoshaphat, Did I not tell you that he would not prophesy good concerning me, but evil? You know, why did we have to bring this guy in here? It's all just negative. Now, the background for this whole story is an interesting one that involves the next section. And the question of like why you had 400 prophets that said, Oh yeah, go take Ramoth Gilead. So let's look at this background, because it involves angels. Micaiah said, verse 19, therefore hear the word of the Lord. I saw the Lord sitting on his throne. This was in his vision. And all the hosts of heaven standing by him on his right and on his left. Now, the host of heaven is a terminology for angels, right? Verse 20. The Lord said, Who will entice Ahab to go up and fall at Ramoth Gilead? In other words, who will go and, you know, trick him into going up to Ramoth Gilead so he can be killed. And one one of the hosts of heaven said this, another one said that. It says in verse 21, then a spirit came forward and stood before the Lord. Now, the spirit, again, that's the word ruach in the Hebrew for like wind. Okay, and that's why we make this association with physical wind in nature, because they operate in a similar fashion. So this spirit comes forward, he's standing before the Lord, and he said, I will entice him. And the Lord said to him, Okay, how are you gonna do it? Now, isn't this interesting, first of all? First of all, the Lord does not say, Okay, he doesn't say, he could have said, Okay, I want you to go do this. But he didn't do that. He actually put a question out there to the hosts of heaven, these angels, and he said, I want y'all to figure out what who's gonna do what, when are you gonna do it? In other words, he gave them some volition in the matter, didn't he? It's very interesting. He didn't just command them, he said, All right, you and then he didn't tell him how to do it. He said, All right, what do you think? You tell me how you're gonna do it. And so there's this opportunity in the angelic realm to have discussion, to decide amongst themselves how they want to carry something out, and then he's now gonna tell us how. And he said, verse 22, B, I will go out and be a deceiving spirit in the mouth of all his prophets. Now, first of all, that's a very strange thing to say, but notice the word mouth, right? Spirit in the mouth of all his prophets. What do we do with our mouth?

SPEAKER_02 19:02

I mean, we breathe, but what else do we do? We speak. Language. Language.

SPEAKER_01 19:08

Somehow this one angel is going to influence the words that come out of the mouth of all his prophets. And if we read early in the chapter, you see there were 400 of them. And they all said the same thing. So they were all inspired by this spirit to say the exact same thing. So let's read on and elaborate a little bit more on this interesting situation. Then the Lord said to him, You are to entice him and also prevail. Go and do so. Okay, so now you've told me the plan, you're gonna do it. Okay? Now therefore, behold, the Lord has put a deceiving spirit in the mouth of all these your prophets, and the Lord has proclaimed disaster against you. That's against Ahab. Now Verse 23 The Lord has put how many deceiving spirits in the mouth?

SPEAKER_02 20:01

One. Somebody said one.

SPEAKER_01 20:03

Because it's just singular. A deceiving. Not multiple ones. Well, notice this in the mouth of all these prophets. Which we know the number to be 400. How could one deceiving spirit be in the mouth of 400 different prophets? How could he, in other words, divide and multiply himself? But angels have this ability somehow to do this. You remember in the New Testament, there's a demon that's in a man that gets cast out, and it's not one demon, it's allegiance or indwelling one person. And here we have a demon who is able to divide and multiply himself to be in the mouth of over 400 prophets. So we don't know how they do this. It's not explained how they can do this, but it's the the fact is that they do do this.

SPEAKER_02 20:56

Now, um sometimes we wonder when we see things on the news.

SPEAKER_01 21:05

How such you know, things like the Floyd murder and all that stuff like that. What in the world how could so many people all get on this one bandwagon on this one murder? I mean, people are murdered every day. Like this doesn't happen every day. What what is going on that this would happen in this scenario? And how could so many people be rushed to one idea? I think we get insight behind that here. I think that there are sometimes one demon that is put in all these people and working all toward one thing. And we it it it's so prevalent this idea that it it became known as the mob mentality. What happened in Acts chapter 19 when Paul was rushed down at Ephesus to the great theater? And that which houses over 22,000 possible people could have been there, and they all want to get after Paul. And we know Ephesus was a center of demon demonism and occultism and a magic center. They had, you know, a year or so before burned all the magic books of the people that at Ephesus who'd come to the Lord Jesus Christ. And so the gospel was penetrating Ephesus and all of Asia, and this was a threat to who? It's a threat to Satan. And so all of a sudden, all these people rush. And some people were saying this, and some people were saying that, and they and it says they didn't even know really why they had gathered. Where is all this coming from? This is the mob mentality. And it's because there are satanic forces behind these types of mobs. That's what we're given insight into here. Um let's see, what else do we have here on this point?

SPEAKER_02 23:04

Um Vox Popula Vox Dei, the French saying the voice of the populist is the voice of the of God.

SPEAKER_01 23:14

This is this is the spirit of democracy. Democracy says the majority must be right.

SPEAKER_02 23:25

We're not a democracy, by the way.

Daniel 10 And National Angelic War

Satan’s Strategy To Stop Faith

SPEAKER_01 23:26

We're a republic. The republic for which I stand. And that's how it goes. It doesn't say the democracy. Democracy is a different thing altogether. You want democracy, go back to the French Revolution and see what the result of a democracy is. But behind that is the idea that the voice of the populace must be the voice of God. In other words, the voice of the majority must be the voice of God. Well, was the voice of the majority the voice of God in 1 Kings 22? 400 prophets said, Yes, Ahab, go up. The Lord will give you success. One voice said, You're going to be killed. And Israel's going to go back to their homes with their tail between their legs. And the voice, was it the voice of the majority that was right, or was it the voice of the one? The voice of the one. See? So this idea that democracy is a good idea is actually a terrible idea. Some of our founders said that. Some of the founders of this country said it's an absolutely terrible idea. That's why we're not supposed to be. So that's an interesting story, though, about what is behind the scenes operating in unbelievers. Satan's at work in the sons of disobedience. He's the one that carries the spirit and cultivation of our civilization. And it's a scary thing. Let's go to a third thing. Good angels in the Old Testament, Israel, explain visions. For example, to Ezekiel, Zechariah, Daniel. And these are all what we call apocalyptic literature. Apocalyptic literature is literature that's highly symbolic, highly visionary, and it will always have angelic interpreters, which is always my favorite point of the whole thing. Because people say, well, I don't know what the book of Daniel means. I mean, it's all these just symbols, and there's these beasts, and there's this statue, and this goat and this ram, and I don't know. What is all this? Well, there's angels there that explain it to you, so you don't really have to guess. Um, yes, highly visionary, highly symbolic, but the angels are given there to give uh interpretation. And good angels, we'll turn over to Daniel 10. Good angels serve as messengers of God. Fallen angels are trying to disrupt these messages, these messages from getting through. And there's battlefields that are located above every nation on earth. Daniel chapter 10 is one of the best places to see this. And you'll notice how closely connected. Have you noticed how closely connected angels are to politics and government? I mean, Ahab was the king of Israel, so that was highly involved, high angelic involvement with that political administration. Now we have in Daniel 10, Daniel has basically seen a vision, and again, because he he says he kind of understands it, but it's caused great conflict for him. And so he's struggling and he's fasting, and he's in prayer about this vision that he has seen. In Daniel 10, 10, you can see he's in a deep sleep before that. He has a deathly pallor about him, he has no strength. And in verse 10, then behold, a hand touched me and set me, trembling on my hands and knees, and he said to me, O Daniel, man of high esteem, understand the words that I'm about to tell you, and stand upright, for I have now been sent to you. So this is an angelic messenger, right? When he had spoken this word to me, I stood up trembling. Then he said to me, Don't be afraid, Daniel, for from the first day that you set your heart on understanding this and on humbling yourself before your God, your words were heard. And I have come in response to your word. But, verse 13, the prince of the kingdom of Persia was withstanding me for twenty-one days. Now the prince of the kingdom of Persia is not the literal human prince. This is an angel, a demonic angel, who is the one who is influencing and animating, essentially, the real prince of the kingdom of Persia. And he's doing so if you think of nations, um, and here we have Persia. What's Persia today? Iran. Uh same places are still in the news today, right? So above Iran, if you could take like walls and just send them up into the atmosphere over Earth, you'd see that there's an airspace that is controlled by certain demonic powers that inhabit that sphere. And they function in the politics and the government of the Iranian regime. And this angel says, Hey, from the first day you started praying, Daniel, I set off to make my course to you to get a message through, to explain to you this vision that you saw. But I got hung up in the airspace over Persia in a battle for 21 days. So let's read it again. The prince of the kingdom of Persia was withstanding me for 21 days. Then, behold, Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me, for I'd been left there with the kings of Persia. Multiplicity of kings. So he was battling not just one fallen angel, but multiple ones over the airspace of Iran. And finally, Michael comes on the 21st day. And if you read back in the story, it took those two three more days together to defeat these so they could actually get through to just to bring a message. Daniel. And you think about this. Sometimes you have a prayer request. Sometimes you've been praying about something, and you're like, Lord, are you ever going to answer? And maybe he is, maybe he's not. Maybe it takes a long time, maybe it's the next day. But just think of all the conflict and battle that could be taking place as angels are the ones who are to somehow be involved in the answer to our prayer, but they get hung up over the over the airspace of the United States of America. This is the real world that's going on. And we're given here some insight into that. And so then he goes on and he gives him understanding. But the important thing to see is that there are these conflicts that are transpiring in the atmosphere above nations on earth. I want to back away before we go to the final aspect and deal with the finalities of the judgment on angels. And I want to take us back and talk a little bit about Satan's strategy. Satan's strategy. Here we go. I think I have four or five points that go through his strategy in this present era. Because we talked about the pre-flood impact of angels on history, the impact of angels during Israel's history, and now we're moving basically into the church age to talk about angels' impact on church history. Okay. First point, they attempt to stop evangelism. Let's turn to 2 Corinthians 4.4. 2 Corinthians 4.4.

SPEAKER_02 30:51

Does Satan want people to become believers?

SPEAKER_01 30:54

No, he's constantly trying to stop people from becoming believers because every person is born an unbeliever, right? Because we're born in our transgressions and sins. So we're a part of Satan's kingdom. Anytime a person believes, they're taken out of his kingdom and they're moved into Christ's kingdom by position. So it's like the person has defected from his kingdom. And he's not very happy about that. He doesn't want anybody to defect from his kingdom. 2 Corinthians 4, 3, and even if our gospel is veiled, Paul says, it's veiled to those who are perishing, in whose case the God of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. He doesn't want them to see that. He doesn't want them to see the light of the gospel. The other passage I listed is Matthew 13, 19. That's the story of the sower, the four soils, and the farmer goes out and he's sowing the seed, some falls on the side of the road, remember? And that's where the farmer has walked, and the ground is hard, and this the seed doesn't go into the soil. And it says, and the birds come along and they take it up, right? They take it away. So the soil never receives the seed. When Jesus explains that parable in that soil, he says the birds represent Satan. Whenever the gospel goes out, what does he try to do? He tries to snag it away so people don't understand it and don't believe it. And so he doesn't want people to do this. What's been interesting in the New Testament as well as in church history is that every time you have a revival, if you study church history carefully, you'll notice there are counter-revivals that immediately follow. Like what happened in the, you have Wycliffe before the Reformation. He's the morning star, right, of the Reformation. He translates the Bible into English, not from the original languages, but he's getting trying to get an English Bible. Then you've got Martin Luther, right? And he's trying to get the Bible in German. You've got other people translating the Bible into native tongues of the, particularly the northern European countries. And all this goes on with Calvin and Zwingli and Savonarola and all these guys. And they're the gospel is going out, and people are getting justified, the doctrine of justification by faith, and they're being set free, you know. Or by grace are you saved through faith, right? And then what quickly followed on the heels of the Reformation, but the Catholic counter-reformation. So what the original reformers were saying is that, hey, if you if you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, you are legally declared righteous. And you are viewed by him as perfect in his sight. And the Roman Catholics said, no, we can't let that doctrine get out. So how are we going to combat that doctrine? And their idea was that, well, if you tell people that they can know they're saved and they have assurance of salvation and that they are justified and right with God, then they'll just they'll just live licentious life. They'll go out and live like hell. They'll use that freedom that they have to sin. And so they presented the argument that, well, yeah, it's it's faith that saves, but the faith that saves is never alone. It always has work. So you have to have good works.

SPEAKER_02 34:20

And if you don't have good works, you're not really saved. And then that's what Roman Catholic wrote in his last finished volume of the Institutes of the Christian Religion.

SPEAKER_01 34:36

Considered probably the greatest work of the Reformation. He said in the last pages, uh the last uh volume when he finished the editorial work, okay, it's not faithful and it saves. Because the faith that saves cannot be alone. It has to have work. And the counter-reformation was successful, and it's still with us here today. We've got Lordship, salvation. We've got their whole reform camp saying, hey, look, yeah, it's faithful and it saves, but the faith that saves is never alone. So did you have the right kind of faith? And now the focus is on did you have the right kind of faith, not who do you put your faith, who did you put your faith in? See? That's a total movement of our view and way of thinking from looking at Christ to looking at what kind of faith we have. Now I'm sitting here all the time evaluating, do I have the right kind of faith? Do I have the right kind of faith? In fact, there was a movie done about this called The Right Stuff. The movie, the NASA movie, about going to the moon. The movie's called The Right Stuff. And the author behind that actually knew this theology. And the whole thing about the astronauts was, hey, I mean, do you have what it takes to be an astronaut, right? But he was playing off a theological theme that developed in the Counter-Reformation. The idea that if you really have the right kind of faith, then you'll have the right kind of work. And that means that everything gets distorted. And it's no longer that you're saved by grace alone through faith alone. You're saved by grace alone through faith alone that has this specific type of works. Who gets to decide what those are? How many work? I mean, who who is who is who is behind the scenes doing this? And how can we ever have assurance of salvation if we're just always constantly wondering if we have the right stuff? See, if I'm constantly worrying if I have the right stuff, I'm always looking internally at myself. And who am I not looking at when I'm looking internally at myself? I'm not looking at Jesus Christ. And what does it say in Colossians 3:1? Keep seeking things above, setting your mind on the things above. Don't set your mind in here. If you look in here, what are you gonna find? Don't look in me. You're gonna find a mess. Okay, and I'm not gonna pour it out in front of you. Okay? And I don't want to see yours either.

unknown 36:43

Okay.

Intimidation Persecution And Resistance

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That's why we have confession. We take that to the Lord, right? The problem is you're never gonna find assurance inside yourself because guess what? You can never be 100% perfect all the time. And so this was a counter-reformation because so many people were getting justified by faith, and Satan says, I've got to stop this at the reformation, so he develops behind the scenes the counter-reformation. We have another one, the second great awakening. So interesting, like late 1700s, very early 1800s, you have the second great awakening in America. A true revival, you know, back to the Bible. People like, you know, coming to Christ. Every time Satan sees uh a person come to Christ, think of it like this. Think of it like uh you've got a clock and you've got a second hand on the clock. And every time somebody believes, that second hand ticks. Okay? And every time that happens, Satan doesn't like that, right? He says, well, somebody just defect. But think like when you have the second great awakening, all of a sudden the second hand is going. Just think how he feels. Like, oh my gosh, we've got to stop this, we've got to stop this. So that's why after Reformation and after revivals, you start to see counters to those that quickly crop up. What happened in the wake of the Second Great Awakening? Three major cults arose. All between 1835 and 1875. And those are the cults of Jehovah's Witness, Mormonism, and Seventh-day Adventism. What was that there for? Why did those three all develop in that very short span of time immediately after the Second Great Awakening? Do you not think there were unseen forces behind the scene that were doing this? Of course he was. Satan felt threatened. And so he immediately began to pawn off all sorts of cult and uh cultish ideas. So that's uh an interesting aspect to what his current strategy is. He wants to stop evangelism. He wants to stop people from uh defecting from his kingdom. Secondly, fallen angels attempt to destroy believers. 1 Peter 5.8, right? Look at 1 Peter 5.8. Peter says, be of sober spirit, be on the alert. We're supposed to do this every day, right? Be on the alert, be on the watch. Why? Because your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour. We saw this in the days of Job. We see the exact same thing. Where where have you been, the Lord says? Home and roaming around the earth. Doing what?

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Seeking somebody to devour. Who you got in mind? Job. Job only loves you because you give Job goodies. And we'll get to that in a minute. And then he says, but resist him.

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Firm in your faith. Resist him. Resist him. They want to destroy us. Okay? Acts chap um, how do they do this? Well, first of all, there it's not always physical persecution. We'll talk about that. That's when he's really desperate. Um when he's not as desperate, he'll use intimidation, he'll use threat. What do you see in Acts chapter 4? Peter and John heal this guy, this lame guy. And then they're brought before the council, and the council says, You're not supposed to teach in this name. You cannot teach in this name.

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Do not use the name of Jesus. And then they whipped him. And they before they left, they said, Hey, we can't stop.

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We can't stop preaching this name. And it says they went back out into the temple. I mean, like right in the temple. It says they went on preaching and teaching the name of the Lord. And people were getting saved. But it's that intimidation. I mean, who is behind the council? They're trying to intimidate them, trying to get them to stop preaching the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. You got the whole COVID story here the last few years. You can't meet anymore as churches. We're going to send you a letter from the Washington State of Health.

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Throwing the fire. We're not going to be intimidated. The scriptures tell us to not forsake assembling ourselves. Whose word is priority? The Lord's word?

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Or some humans that are being manipulated by demons. Trying to divert our attention away from Christ. We're not going to go along with that. That's intimidation, it's a threat technique. If you fall for that, guess what? You'll fall for anything. I mean, this is just a threat. This is really nothing. Okay? Toughen up. And most of the church said, oh, okay, we'll sit in our cars in the parking lot or we won't meet at all or something like that. Whatever. Sorry, but that was just anemic. Academia. It happens in academia. What if you're a Christian in the academic sphere? You want to go and you want to study, you know, medicine, science, things like that. You want to go into the higher degrees, you want to get your undergraduate degree, or you want to go in further to PhD. Well, they have the gatekeepers, you know. Gatekeepers in professional academia, they're not going to let you through. They know you're a Christian.

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That's intimidation.

Accusations In Heaven Job To Zechariah

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If you keep holding to that Christian stuff, you're not going to get to go on and be whatever you want to be, a professor, a you know, a researcher, whatever. Um you can't you can't be intimidated by it. But this is a form of trying to destroy believers. Now if it gets if it it gets worse because it can get to physical violence, Acts chapter 7. There's a guy named Stephen. And uh Stephen was too much for any of the Pharisees to or even Saul to handle. The guy had arguments that he was able to put the scriptures together in ways that they could not handle. Because nobody could answer him. His wisdom, his ability with the scriptures above everybody. It was like what I consider the first apolog apologist for the Christian church. And they could they didn't know what to do with the guy, so when they didn't know what to do with the guy, they the only thing they could do is just kill him. Because he was a threat. Who is he a threat to ultimately? Them or to Satan? See? Who is behind the council of the Pharisees and Sadducees there? They were trying to stone or it did end up stoning Stephen. Well, obviously Satan. Think of the Christians in the Roman Colosseum in like what the 270s of the Roman Empire. I mean, why were they thrown why were they thrown to into the basically to death? You know, in the Colosseum. It's because they they wouldn't worship Caesar. They're not going to do that. They're going to worship only Jesus Christ. And they had backbone, right? Who was behind all that though, throwing throwing them through the to the lion? Throwing the Christians to the lion. See, it wasn't just emperor. There's the princes and principalities of darkness that were working behind them. Because the Christianity was getting out of control. It was growing, it was taking over. But at times, you know, um what ends up happening? Every time this happens, and there's persecution of the church in this way, like physical violence, the church tends to grow. Oddly enough, Tertullian said it this way in the early church blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church. The more blood you spill, the more seeds are spawned to grow more Christian. We saw this in China. We see this everywhere. You throw they throw the pastors in China in prison for preaching the gospel, and what would happen? More people would become Christians. So they were okay, well, maybe this isn't the best thing to do. Because Satan kind of oversteps, he goes too far. And then, you know, the worst thing that could happen happens to him, and that's that second hand goes fast. Um third thing that angel fallen angels do, they accuse believers in heaven. This is a story of Job, right? It's also a story in Zechariah and in Revelation.

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Let's turn to Job real quick.

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Job uh one, one through five basically describes his wealth and all of his children. One of the greatest men of all the East. A very wealthy, wealthy man. Believer, of course. Flameless, upright, fearing God. Now, verse 6, there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves. There's where people say, see, there's angels, sons of God, it's always angels in the Old Testament. So they came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came among them. Some people say, Well, see, Satan's not one of the sons of God, he came among the sons of God.

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Anyway, okay.

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The Lord said to Satan, From where do you come? And Satan answered the Lord and said, From roaming about on the earth and walking around on it. Sounds a lot like 1 Peter 5 8. He's roaming around seeking who he may devour. Verse 8, the Lord said to Satan, Have you considered my servant Job? There's no one like him on earth. Blameless and upright man, fearing God, turning away from evil.

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Then Satan answered the Lord, Job, fear God for nothing. He's making a case, right? Satan's making a case.

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He said, No, Job doesn't, he doesn't fear you for any good reason other than you give him a bunch of good. You've made him wealthy. That's why I fear God. He says, verse 10, have you not made a hedge about him and his house and all that he has on every side? You bless the work of his hands and his possessions of increased in the land. You know, Job worships you and fears you because you made him rich. He says, So put forth your hand now and touch all that he has, and he will curse you to your face. Take all the goodies away, and then we'll see if he really loves you. Satan wants to make the case that God really is not worthy of worship. That there's nothing in God that is really worthy of worship. That's in fact the lie that he tries to spread to people in the world. God is not worthy of your worship. He's unjust and he's unfair and he shouldn't be worshiped. And this is the core of Satan's lie to people in the world. And you'll hear it. You'll hear people all the time. Basically conveying this idea that if there is a God, he's not worthy of our worship because he would never allow these things to happen that we see happen. Where is that idea coming from? Is that idea just coming from your friend, your coworker, your unbelieving cousin, or whatever? No. That idea is as old as the devil has been around. He's been pawning this lie on people. So Job is a test case for this, right? So we go to chapter 2, verse 1. Again. Well, we should look at Job's response, right? So he loses everything he has, including all ten of his sons and daughters. And then what do you see happen at the end of chapter 1? Verse 20. Then Job arose and tore his robe and shaved his head, and he fell to the ground, and he did what?

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He worshiped. He worshiped the God who took everything away.

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And he said, Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked shall I return there. And it's true for all of them. He ain't taking nothing with you. The Lord gave, the Lord is taken away, blessed be the name of the Lord. And through all this, Job did not sin, nor did he blame God. So, case one, test one, passed with flying colors, right? Chapter 2, verse 1. Again there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came among them to present himself before the Lord. And the Lord said to Satan, Where have you come from? Satan gives the same answer. Verse 3, the Lord said, Have you considered my servant Job? There's no one like him. Repeat, repeat, right?

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This time Satan says in verse 4, skin for skin.

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Yes, all that a man has, he will give for his life. However, put forth your hand now and touch his bone and his flesh, he will curse you to your faith. In other words, take his health away. Chapter 1 is the wealth, chapter 2 is the health. Don't we have a gospel today called the Health and Wealth Gospel?

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Did they ever read the book of Job? Anyway. Probably not. If they did, they didn't read it seriously.

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So he goes forth from the presence of the Lord, he smote Job with sore boils from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head. He took a pot shirt to scrape himself. He's obviously very uncomfortable. And his wife said to him, and now she's even getting in on the mix, Do you still hold fast your integrity? Curse God and die. But he said to her, You speak as one of the foolish women speaks. Shall we indeed accept good from God and not accept adversity? And in all this, Job did not sin with his lips. This is constant attacks, okay, on believers, okay? From Satan, trying to convince us that God is not really worthy of our worship. And that we should only worship God when he gives us the good stuff. And we shouldn't worship God when bad things happen. But Job tells us otherwise. And then Job's four friends come in the mix, right? This goes on for like 30-something chapters.

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And then finally God breaks in on the scene in chapter 38. Chapter 38.

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Job almost got to the point he's like beginning to think, well, okay, maybe something's not right here. And it was at that time that the Lord broke into the conversation. Verse 1. The Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind. Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? You gird up your loins like a man. I'm going to ask you some questions, and you start instructing me. In other words, I mean, you would think that the Lord would come in and say, Oh, Job, you know, I mean, I've been wanting to tell you this all along. I mean, really, everything's okay. Only thing that's going on has nothing to do with anything you did. It's just me and the angels, and I'm resolving something over there. So it's okay. I'm going to put my big arm around you and I'm going to comfort you and I'm going to wipe away your tears. He doesn't do that at all. He says, Let's get something straight right now. I am the creator. You are the creature, and you don't know anything. Because if you know something, I want you to start telling me right now how much you know. See, the problem for humans and the problem for Christians is Christians too. We have this problem. We want to say, okay, Lord, what's your plan for my life? I want to know what's going to happen in my life. And only then will I trust you. Only if you show me the plan that you have for me. I mean, what's going to happen? Who am I going to marry? How many kids am I going to have? What's going to happen? Am I going to get wealthy? Am I going to be poor? You know, what where's my job going to be? Where am I going to live? It's these are all the things we struggle with trusting Him with. Like, is all this going to be okay? Am I going to lose a child? Am I going to get cancer? I mean, we we can just constantly work up fear in ourselves about all the things that could happen. And we don't want to trust the Lord. And that's why we're fearing. We're not trusting the Lord. And what we're saying is, hey, Lord, if you'll just tell me everything that you have planned for my life, then I'll trust you. And the Lord says, guess what? I'm never going to do that ever. I'm never going to do that because that would destroy the whole entire thing that we have going here. He wants us to live by faith, not by sight. If we could see the plan, we wouldn't have to live by faith. But he wants us to live by faith. So the first thing that he has to get straight with every one of us, and this is an individual, this is you. This is you and God. This isn't you and me and God, you and God, every individual in this room, is that he's the creator, okay? And you're the creature. And we don't go around telling him how things should be or if he's doing something right or wrong. We are not in a position to do that. And that's what he's telling Job. Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me if you know something, Smarty Pants. You and your four friends, you think you know something? You know nothing. Okay? I've got something going on. And I don't have to tell you about it. Sometimes we're suffering because God is just doing something, resolving something with the angels.

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And you say, and I got caught up in that? Yes. Just like Job. This goes on, chapter 40, verse 2.

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Verse 1, he says, Then the Lord said to Job, Will the fault finder contend with the Almighty? I mean, you think you find a fault with me? Let him who reproves God answer it. Then Job answered the Lord and said, Behold, I'm insignificant.

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You can read the rest, but you know what, are you going to have some words with God?

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I know a lot of people think they're going to have words with God. No, God's going to have words with them.

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And then their mouths are going to be silent. He's not us. He's not on par with us. We're not his equal. He's God. We're just pitiful little humans sitting on the tailcoats of his grace.

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So this is the story, though, that Satan wants to destroy us, and sometimes this is why we're suffering, because God is resolving something in the angelic conflict. Let's go over to Zechariah 3, verse 1. We'll finish with this one. Zechariah 3, verse 1. Satan doesn't like it that we're saved. Okay? And he really doesn't like this doctrine of justification by faith. This whole idea that the moment a person believes, they are credited with the perfect righteousness of Christ. Now, this is a story about Israel, actually in the latter days, in a vision. It's symbolic. But many people have pointed out that this is a wonderful illustration of what's going on every day in heaven. And so we want to look at it. Very interesting about how God has justified us. Chapter 3, verse 1. Then he showed me Joshua the high priest, standing before the angel of the Lord, and Satan standing at his right hand to accuse him. Now he's doing this to you too. He's accusing you day and night. Revelation 12, okay? Every time you sin, he does what? Did you see what so-and-so did? Did you see that? Lord, did you see that? He does this day and night. He's accusing, accusing, accusing. So here's Joshua the high priest, in the high class, you know, working in the temple, okay, that sacrifices all that. And you have Satan standing at his right hand to accuse him. And then the Lord said to Satan, the Lord rebuke you, Satan. Indeed, the Lord who has chosen Jerusalem, rebuke you. Is this Joshua the high priest? Is this not a brand plucked from the fire? In other words, the picture is that he's a believer, okay? One picked out, plucked out from the rest who are doomed to eternal separation from God. Now Joshua is clothed there with filthy garments. I won't even tell you what that word means in the Hebrew because I don't think you can say it in church, even though it's in the Bible.

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But it's absolutely detestable what this man looked like.

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The filth, the excrement, covered in it, standing before the angel. He spoke and he said to those who are standing before him, saying, Remove the filthy garments from it. Now look, this is a picture of all of us before we believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. Just total filth before God, a holy God. And again he said to him, See, I've taken your iniquity away from you. So not only, and there's the forgiveness, taking your iniquity away, I will clothe you with festival robes. This is the putting on a pure white garment, a picture of righteousness, the righteousness of Christ. Then I said, Let them put a clean turban on his head, so they put a clean turban on his head and clothe them with garments while the angel of the Lord was standing by. And the angel of the Lord admonished Joshua, saying, Thus says the Lord of hosts, it's the Lord of angels, right? Hosts, if you will walk in my ways, and if you will perform my service, then you will also govern my house and also have charge of my courts, and I will grant you free access among those who are standing. Free access. See, that's something that we have that Satan doesn't have. He doesn't have free access. He wants that free access, but he doesn't have a plan of salvation. Angels don't have a plan of salvation. One third of the angels fell, that's it, they fell. They're fixed, right? And the other two-thirds of the angels, they're fixed. They're not going to fall. So Satan is upset about this plan of salvation that God has for us. Where if we just believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, our filthiness is taken away. The pure righteousness of Jesus Christ is put on us, like Joshua the high priest, and we have free access. And he's saying, That's what I want. God says, You're never ever going to get it. He's peeved about it. He's peeved about it. And that's why he's accusing us day and night, day and night, day and night. It's a legal court that is actually transpiring in heaven daily.

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Now at this point, the price hadn't been paid. But if you go to Revelation 12, 10, of course, the price has been paid. Um we're out of time. We're out of time. I'm gonna have to finish this next next time.

Stages Of Defeat And Final Charge

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But next time's gonna be something else, so it's okay. As long as we just learn the word, right? I hope you're having fun with this. But um the good news with the judgment is, and we'll just quickly sum this up, where I'm actually trying to get after giving all this background with angels in the pre-flood world, the fall of angels, the pre-flood world, history with Israel, history, their strategy now with the church, is to the fact that what Jesus Christ did on the cross delivered a judgment on the fallen angels. And we'll look at this next time, Colossians 2. And you say, but they're still roaming around. Yes. So there's stages, okay, to the putting away of Satan and his demons. The judgment has already happened on the cross. I mean, they're done for, it's over. Satan is gonna lose, right? But he's still roaming around, seeking to devour us. He's making accusations against us. But one day, at the middle of the tribulation, he's gonna be kicked out of heaven, down to the earth. He's gonna pursue Israel to try to destroy her. It's his last gasp attempt to stop the plan of God, to destroy every Israelite on the planet. We're moving that folk's direction. That direction, folks. I'm gonna get my word straight. We're moving that direction. Anti-Semitism is rising. Lawlessness is on an unprecedented scale in church history. Every nation's gonna turn against Israel, including the United States of America at some point. Satan will be kicked out of heaven, then they'll try to destroy all the Jews. Christ will return to set up his kingdom. He'll lock away Satan and the demons for a thousand years, right? No roaming on the earth. Be released for a short time after the thousand years. God will rain down fire, destroy all of his enemies, and cast the devil and his angels in the lake of fire forever. There's the five stages there to his total demise, but it all starts with the judgment that happened on the cross, right? That judgment took place by God through Christ. And the angels have said fallen angels have essentially been defeated. We'll get we'll get to all that. But um we still have to deal with it. We still have to put on our spiritual armor and go to war every day, right? You still have to be alert because he's still around. So we'll get into all that in the church.

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Thank you for joining us on Beyond the Walls with Jeremy Thomas. If you would like to see the visuals that went along with today's sermon, you can find those on Rumble and on YouTube under Spoke and Bible Church. That is where Jeremy is the pastor and teacher. We hope you found today's lesson productive and useful in growing closer to God and walking more obediently with Him. If you found this podcast to be useful and helpful, then please consider writing us in your favorite podcast app. And until next time, we hope you have a blessed and wonderful day.