I’ve noticed that ones broad worldview has a really significant impact on how they think about Jesus. My own background was a material atheist and by extension, that has meant that most of my friendship network has the same worldview. A material atheist scoffs at the idea of faith in Christ because for them, we live in a world explained by science and therefore to believe in the supernatural is to believe in disproven fairytales. Honestly, living in Melbourne I feel as though this worldview explains almost 100% of the people I encounter day to day. Who is going to win the football or what direction the property market is heading are infinitely more interesting topics for the average Melbournian than how we got here and what the meaning of our existence is. I’d probably go as far as saying that I have not had one single discussion with a material atheist on faith that’s come anywhere near what I’d call interesting. The depth of debate is akin to explaining complex algebra to a three year old - you’re just on two totally different wavelengths. I wrote about many of the delusions of the world recently and whether people agree with my answers is neither here nor there, but any intellectually honest look into topics like evolution is going to lead someone to a God sized hole in their theories of how we got here. But I just don’t hear the interesting questions from material atheists regarding this because they’ve never actually considered it.
Then there’s another group - those who do believe in a supernatural realm but do not believe that Jesus was the incarnate Son of God. Generally, these are people who consider themselves to be ‘spiritual’ - they may be into things like meditation, the new age and occult, psychedelics, mediums, UFOs or all of the above. People who accept there is an unseen realm but don’t know how to comprehend it, or they might have gone right down one particular rabbit hole and established a very firm position on how we are to understand this realm. I’ve been thinking about this recently because a good friend went from being a material atheist with an existentialist worldview to someone who now accepts without any doubt that there is a supernatural realm after experimenting with psychedelics. This is a friend whom I speak to about deep topics like the meaning of our existence (pre and post me coming to Christ) so what was really interesting for me was just how different the discussion with them was after they had this transformation of their worldview. Though we spoke on the topic in person for half an hour or so, I’ve been thinking about the conversation a lot since and it’s broadly got me thinking about how I can best testify what Christ has taught me to someone who does not follow Him but knows that there is a spiritual realm.
The first point to focus on is that if someone believes in a spiritual realm, they simply must establish a position on the identity of Jesus Christ. A material atheist can easily dismiss the Gospels and their importance because they just don’t believe it matters at all, but a spiritual person cannot believe they are a part of a spirit led world without testing the claims made by the person who called themselves God and said that anyone who follows Him should have everlasting life (Joh. 3:16). I may say that its intellectually dishonest for a spiritual person to not have read the Gospels, but given that we are talking about people who believe in spirits and are led by them I actually think the reason that they would not have is not dishonesty but rather a result of demonic spirits pulling them away from it. With this piece I intend to give a very respectful and considered explanation on what I believe the Bible teaches us about the spiritual world, but to begin with I am going to give a very critical and blunt response to one position on the identify of Jesus within the ‘spiritual community’. Unfortunately this position seems to be growing in popularity and its a shame, because of all the beliefs one could hold this is right up there with the most senseless that there is. That’s the position as Jesus as the figure of christ consciousness or the descended master.
Their theory goes that Jesus was a spiritual figure who came to show us the way and unlock the secrets of the spiritual world, much like other famous religious figures like Buddha or Mohammad. Jesus was an enlightened being that we can all learn from to unlock the god within us and reach our own enlightenment and understanding. Ultimately, just like Buddha taught us, the key to happiness and enlightenment is peace and love etc etc. If you want a perfect example of this, you need look any further than someone who has been exalted on Oprah as a spiritual guru, Eckhart Tolle. Here’s a quote from his book ‘A New Earth’ - “Jesus speaks of the innermost I am, the essence identity of every man and woman, every life-form, in fact. He speaks of the life that you are. Some Christian mystics have called it the Christ within; Buddhists call it your Buddha nature; for Hindus, it is Atman, the indwelling God.” Seriously, one cannot possibly make this claim unless they are foolish, or their very deliberate intent is to deceive. In John 8:58 Jesus replies to the Pharisees that Before Abraham was, I am which caused them to respond immediately by taking up stones to cast at him. Why did they take up stones to cast at him? Because they knew that in declaring Himself as I AM Jesus was clearly referencing Exodus 3:14 where GOD responded to Moses question about what to call Him as I AM THAT I AM - the comment from Jesus was a very clear point that He was declaring Himself to be God. People like Tolle also like to use Jesus’s comment in John 14:6 that He is the way, the truth, and the life as an example that the way, truth and life is within us all - but they conveniently leave out the second half of the sentence where He declares that no man cometh unto the Father, but by me. At best these explanations of Jesus are intellectually dishonest, but at worst they are deliberate deceptions from the pit of hell and I suspect more often than not they are the latter.
Jesus must have either been who He said He was - YHVH incarnate, or He was a liar. There’s really no in between. He wasn’t a random man who appeared speaking about love and peace that created a revolution, He was the perfect fulfilment of Old Testament prophecy regarding the Messiah who would come to save humanity. Everything He did was prophecy fulfilment, which is why the Jews of the first century followed Him and why the ruling class of religious leaders had Him killed. Read the Jewish Talmud and you will get an understanding of what this ruling class thought of Him - the words are too repulsive to repeat here but feel free to look them up if you wish. If the christ consciousness believers want to pick a figurehead then by all means go with Buddha or Mohammad, or any other of the thousands of charismatic figures who have preached love and peace, but don’t go with the man who came saying “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword” (Mat. 10:34). Similarly, if you want to establish a position that the Gospels do not accurately tell the story of Jesus then that is fine, but the problem you’ll run into there is that if Jesus didn’t do the things described in the Gospels then He is simply Jesus of Nazareth and not Jesus Christ. You’ll accept that the spiritual world is real but your descended master and bringer of light is a random itinerant preacher from a small town in Israel who spent three years quoting and fulfilling Scripture from the Hebrew Bible.
Now that I’ve got my bugbear of christ consciousness out of the way, I just want to lay out a few threads about how the Bible describes this spiritual world. Clearly, it’s a complex topic and given the entire Bible is focused on explaining the unseen realm I’m obviously not going to a) explain it all in detail here or b) convince anyone that the parts I share are correct. All I really want to do is to give someone who accepts there are supernatural forces a few seeds to explore further should they catch their interest. The first and most important thing to note is that the Bible is so incredibly explicit and binary when it comes to understanding spirits - good is what comes from God and everything else is evil. Unless someone is being led by a Spirit that declares Jesus is Lord, then that person is being led by an evil spirit. When people read things like this that are so binary and even jarring, they can naturally turn away given religious dogmas are the cause of wars and unrest. But as a Christian, we are clearly instructed that our weapons of warfare are not carnal (2 Cor 10:4) but Truth and we must not pick up a sword to share it. Interestingly, despite what the false church of Catholicism might have done for the reputation of Christianity, the only wars we are ever instructed to fight or territory we are instructed to gain is of a spiritual nature - a true Christian fights in the spiritual world and never the natural world. And it makes sense - how does one kill a demon with a sword or a bullet?
I do want to stress that if you're someone who has connected with the spiritual realm before, whether it be through psychedelics, mediums, Kundalini awakenings, seances, alien abductions or other magic then I believe that what you have seen and experienced is real. I don't take the position that you are just imagining things. Accepting the Christian understanding of the spiritual realm (whether you agree with it or not at this point) for the purposes of what I am writing, we can gain a greater understanding of the who, how and why of these evil spirits by looking at a few crucial verses.
The first place to look is the fall of man in Genesis 3 and I’m just going to show here the first 6 verses of that chapter.
Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden? And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden: But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die. And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.
Sin entered into the world with a promise from a spiritual being (the serpent) that through the acquisition of secret knowledge man can be god themselves. Let’s be honest, we hear the exact same promises through most of the modern spiritual movements - do this to gain enlightenment and unlock the god within yourself. Raise your consciousness, increase your vibration etc. It’s the core tenet of buddhism, hinduism, the new age, occultism, theosophy, freemasonry and all of the other Mystery Babylon descendants. Again, I’m not here to give anyone following these spiritual practices with a big gotcha moment but rather to show that what you’re partaking in is exactly what the Bible describes as evil spirits - it’s then up to you to decide whether the Bible is truth or lies. I can testify to its truth forever and a day, but ultimately the decision to accept that for oneself is a decision that is made in your own mind.
Now that we see how the Bible first introduces us to evil spirits and how they cause us to sin against our Creator, we can look at a later verse in Genesis that arguably unlocks the whole Bible and our understanding of the supernatural world that governs us. Genesis 6:1-4 introduces us to the moment that fallen angels corrupted mankind and ultimately led to the great flood.
When man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive. And they took as their wives any they chose. Then the Lord said, “My Spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh: his days shall be 120 years.” The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of man and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown.
The Sons of God refers to angelic beings and the Nephilim were giants. So in just four short verses we’re told not only about angelic beings procreating with mankind, but also giants roaming the earth! Clearly this is not a topic for a material atheist, but for someone who accepts the spiritual realm then this get very interesting very quickly. The Bible doesn’t actually give us a whole lot more detail on these verses, but there are various other snippets that certain scholars have spent a lifetime piecing together. Though I’ve not read his book, Gary Wayne has put decades of research into the topic and has some great interviews you can find online for one such scholar. Another one is Michael Heiser, who has authored a book called the Unseen Realm (also available as a documentary on YouTube). Both Wayne and Heiser have their critics and I certainly don’t agree with all that they say, but I think they have some interesting viewpoints and ultimately for me they’ve made me consider things that get me digging deeper into my Bible to understand things better for myself.
One place that we can go to better understand the context of Genesis 6 is the first book of Enoch. 1 Enoch is not a Biblical text, so it’s not Gods inspired Word, but it is an important book written pre Christ and quoted in Jude 1:14 so it is clearly something that readers of the Scriptures were familiar with at the time they were written. 1 Enoch 6-8 gives further colour on what happened in Genesis 6:1-4.
And it came to pass when the children of men had multiplied that in those days were born unto them beautiful and comely daughters. And the angels, the children of the heaven, saw and lusted after them, and said to one another: 'Come, let us choose us wives from among the children of men and beget us children.' And Semjâzâ, who was their leader, said unto them: 'I fear ye will not indeed agree to do this deed, and I alone shall have to pay the penalty of a great sin.' And they all answered him and said: 'Let us all swear an oath, and all bind ourselves by mutual imprecations not to abandon this plan but to do this thing.' Then sware they all together and bound themselves by mutual imprecations upon it. And they were in all two hundred; who descended ⌈in the days⌉ of Jared on the summit of Mount Hermon, and they called it Mount Hermon, because they had sworn and bound themselves by mutual imprecations upon it. 7. And these are the names of their leaders: Sêmîazâz, their leader, Arâkîba, Râmêêl, Kôkabîêl, Tâmîêl, Râmîêl, Dânêl, Êzêqêêl, Barâqîjâl, Asâêl, Armârôs, Batârêl, Anânêl, Zaqîêl, Samsâpêêl, Satarêl, Tûrêl, Jômjâêl, Sariêl. These are their chiefs of tens.
And all the others together with them took unto themselves wives, and each chose for himself one, and they began to go in unto them and to defile themselves with them, and they taught them charms and enchantments, and the cutting of roots, and made them acquainted with plants. And they became pregnant, and they bare great giants, whose height was three thousand ells: Who consumed all the acquisitions of men. And when men could no longer sustain them, the giants turned against them and devoured mankind. And they began to sin against birds, and beasts, and reptiles, and fish, and to devour one another's flesh, and drink the blood. Then the earth laid accusation against the lawless ones.
And Azâzêl taught men to make swords, and knives, and shields, and breastplates, and made known to them the metals of the earth and the art of working them, and bracelets, and ornaments, and the use of antimony, and the beautifying of the eyelids, and all kinds of costly stones, and all colouring tinctures. 2. And there arose much godlessness, and they committed fornication, and they were led astray, and became corrupt in all their ways. Semjâzâ taught enchantments, and root-cuttings, Armârôs the resolving of enchantments, Barâqîjâl, (taught) astrology, Kôkabêl the constellations, Ezêqêêl the knowledge of the clouds, Araqiêl the signs of the earth, Shamsiêl the signs of the sun, and Sariêl the course of the moon. And as men perished, they cried, and their cry went up to heaven.
Enoch 19:1 goes on further regarding the objective and fate of the fallen angels. And Uriel said to me: 'Here shall stand the angels who have connected themselves with women, and their spirits assuming many different forms are defiling mankind and shall lead them astray into sacrificing to demons as gods, [here shall they stand,] till the day of the great judgement in which they shall be judged till they are made an end of.
As previously mentioned, these verses provide a mere snippet but I believe they give a good starting point on the overall narrative of the spiritual world so far as the Bible tells us. So let’s piece it together. God, or YHVH (Yahweh) is the Lord of Hosts and Creator of all things on heaven and earth. He created the angels who dwelled in the heavenly places and He created mankind and the earth that man would have dominion over. God’s masterplan was His creation who were made in His image, but the angels who were part of the heavenly host were jealous at this new creation. So when God created man, a sect of the angels despised them and sought to destroy them. The prophet Isaiah tells us how Lucifer led this rebellion - How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations! For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north:I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High (Isa. 14:12-14).
The fallen angels, having dwelled with God Himself, had an understanding of creation and the mechanisms of the earth far greater than any man should ever know. Why should God keep such information from us? The gnostic worldview is that Yahweh is a tyrant and that Lucifer is a light bringer who sacrificed himself to deliver mankind from the imprisonment of our Creator - this is why many of these prominent groups actually worship Lucifer as their true god (look into the Lucis Trust and the UN if you want to see how deep it goes). It is clear that YHVH has intentionally kept certain knowledge a secret from us - But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die (Gen. 2:17). For any parent this makes perfect sense - as parents we tell our kids all the time to refrain from certain activities not because we like enforcing rules like a tyrant, but because we know that these things are likely to cause them harm or even death. Yet this is what the Genesis 6 rebellion created - a world where mankind could be taught all the various ways to destroy themselves by the same spiritual beings that God initially hoped would support us. Remember that Enoch tells us where this rebellion started, at Mt Hermon, because the incredible importance of this is going to become apparent towards the ends of this article. The fallen angels knew all of the practices that mankind could partake in that would lead to eternal death and their focus was that we would all learn them. Mankind was created with free will and the fallen angels, like God, could never outrightly impose themselves upon us unless we gave them permission to lead us. All of the various initiations described in Enoch are the ways in which these demonic spirits gain that permission. The Bible warns repeatedly against partaking in any of these activities - over and over we’re warned against sorcery, witchcraft, magic and yet just like Adam and Eve in the garden, we cannot help ourselves but to get lured into it. If you’re consuming plants (eg psychedelics or hallucinogens) or calling on spirits through other methods, then you are doing exactly what the Word of God instructs you not to do.
Now we’re going to circle back to the actual story of Christ (Christ being the Greek word for Messiah), not the christ consciousness deception. Pre Jesus, the fallen angels had seemingly carried out their plan successfully as mankind had continually strayed from God’s initial plan for them in the Garden and fallen further and further into idolatry. The fallen angels knew about the Messiah who was prophesied, but they did not know the full plan as parts of it were the hidden wisdom, which God ordained before the world unto our glory (1 Cor. 2:7). This is why when the Messiah was born in Bethlehem, the principalities tried to have him killed as a child (Mat. 2:16-18) then ultimately conspired to have Him crucified. However in crucifying the Christ, the fallen angels unknowingly completed God’s perfect plan for mankind’s redemption. As Paul said - none of the princes of this world knew: for had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory (1 Cor. 2:8). Remember where the fallen angels descended onto earth - Mt Herman in the northern region of Bashan. In the final period of Jesus’s ministry, he took His disciples all the way out to a remote Pagan location in the foothills of Mt Herman called Caesarea Philippi and told them about what was to come. This is the same location as the Cave of Pan rock formation, a famous idol worship location otherwise known as the Gates of Hell and it’s there that he told Peter - And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it (Mat. 16:18). Ultimately He’s taken the disciples 250km from Jerusalem to the very belly of the beast and announced in front of them that He would build a congregation that these demons would no longer have any power over. I’m not sure the fallen angels fully comprehended just how big a power move this was at this point, but they would soon learn when He defeated death on the cross.
Psalm 22 prophesied what the Messiah would be subjected to - Many bulls encompass me; strong bulls of Bashan surround me; they open wide their mouths at me, like a ravening and roaring lion. I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint; my heart is like wax; it is melted within my breast; my strength is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue sticks to my jaws; you lay me in the dust of death. For dogs encompass me; a company of evildoers encircles me; they have pierced my hands and feet—I can count all my bones—they stare and gloat over me; they divide my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots.
The bulls of Bashan would pierce His hands and feet! Jesus knew that the fallen angels of Bashan would have Him killed, yet it was what He needed to go through in order to defeat them. Christ’s death and resurrection not only sealed the fate of the fallen angels, but also all of humanity and it set the clock on the end of days. I believe that this is what is described in Revelation 12:10-12 - “Now the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ have come, for the accuser of our brothers has been thrown down, who accuses them day and night before our God. And they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they loved not their lives even unto death. Therefore, rejoice, O heavens and you who dwell in them! But woe to you, O earth and sea, for the devil has come down to you in great wrath, because he knows that his time is short!”
The devil knows his end, and he knows that he only has a short period of time until it comes. Satan disguises himself as an angel of light (2 Cor. 11:14) which is why many people who have had spiritual experiences believe that the beings whom they encounter are friendly, but beware because they prowl around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour (1 Pet. 5:8). As both Revelation and Enoch describe, the devil will be cast into the lake of fire and brimstone…and shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever (Rev 20.10) and whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire (Rev. 20.15) also. The only one to have your name written in the book of life is to be cleansed with the blood of the spotless lamb - Christ Jesus. Beware of the demonic spirits who seek to deceive and defile you, bringing your soul into the lake of fire to dwell forever and ever.
A difficult topic well navigated Luke!
Some have equated the Lake of Fire as having extreme heat but no light at all, an outer darkness, like a black hole. Any thoughts on the black hole comparison?