DEMONS, THE HOUNDS OF HELL

Dr. W. A. Criswell

Ephesians 6:10-18

10-23-83    10:50 a.m.

Demons, evil spirits; there is so much fanaticism and superstition connected with such a topic, and to know the truth of God, the revelation of God, is for all of us a coveted pearl of price, the wisdom of heaven.  So let us begin.

The sermon will follow this form.  After the introduction of the fact of demons, evil and foul spirits, we shall follow as briefly as we can their attack against the unbeliever, their possession of and indwelling of the unbeliever.  Then we shall look at the attack against the children of God, the saints of the Lord, against us.  Then last, our victory in overcoming.

Now the text, in the sixth chapter of the Book of Ephesians beginning at verse 10: “My brethren, be strong in the Lord, and in the power of His might” [Ephesians 6:10], not ours but His:

Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the attacks and the subversions and the deceits and the wiles of the devil.

For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, powers, the rulers of darkness, against spiritual wickedness in the heavenlies.

Wherefore take unto you the whole armor of God …

[Ephesians 6:11-13]

Verse 18, “Praying always with all power and supplication in the Spirit” [Ephesians 6:18].

The list of the organized powers of evil, of darkness, are as though they were in an army; principalities, powers, rulers of darkness, spiritual wickedness [Ephesians 6:12].  Paul means by that that the kingdom of Satan is organized: generals, colonels, lieutenants, privates, all of them under the direction of fallen Lucifer.

There is a kingdom of light and godliness and goodness in this world presided over by our Lord [Colossians 1:12-13], and there is no less a kingdom of darkness and evil presided over by Satan and his fallen angels [Ephesians 6:12].  That is so vividly presented in the Bible in many, many places.  Demons in Holy Scripture are named fifty-five times.  Unclean spirits are named twenty-two times, familiar spirits sixteen times, “spirits” referring to demons fifteen times, evil spirits fourteen times, lying spirits four times, foul spirits two times, jealous spirits two times, and thus it continues through the Word of God.  When we read the life of our Lord in the four Gospels, oft times, as in the passage we read aloud just now, Jesus confronts evil spirits, demons, charges them, commands them, casts them out [Matthew 8:28-34].

When we turn to Luke’s Book of Acts in chapters 8 and 16 and elsewhere [Acts 8:7, 16:16-18], we are confronted with these demonic powers.  And oft are they referred to in the epistles.  And when we come finally to the Apocalypse, the Revelation, the consummation of the age, it is a terror—the portrayal of these satanic rulers.  For example, in the sixteenth chapter of the Revelation, it is the evil spirits that gather together the kings of the earth for the great ultimate final battle of Armageddon [Revelation 16:13-16]. 

All right, let’s begin now with a study of the attack of demons against the unbeliever, that man, that soul outside of Christ.  It is the purpose of Satan to dethrone God and to enthrone himself.  He says, “I will be like the Most High” [Isaiah 14:14].  Always back of satanic effort is that he be worshiped instead of God.  You have that poignantly in the story of the temptations of our Lord, “All this will I give You, if You will fall down and worship me” [Matthew 4:8-9].  The ultimate purpose of all satanic evil is to dethrone the one and true God and to enthrone Satan in the stead of Christ.  And that relentless, remorseless, implacable attack is never ending. 

Well, let us look at it as it is implemented in the world, the world that we live in and we can look at.  Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 10:20:

This I say, that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons … and I would not that ye have fellowship with demons.

You cannot drink the cup of the Lord, and the cup of demons: ye cannot be partakers of the Lord’s table, and of the table of demons.

[1 Corinthians 10:20-21]

Paul there says that the world of unbelief, the world of idolatry is a world presided over by demons, and that when we are idolatrous in our worship—that is, worshipping anything else but the true God—we are worshipping demons, we are demon possessed, we are inhabited by demons.

Animism, idolatry, the worship of evil spirits has been and still is almost universal.

Now a second thing about the attack of demons against an unbelieving world; they counterfeit prophecy.  Prophecy, using the word only in the sense of foretelling the future, prophecy is a prerogative of God.  Only God knows the future—He alone, no one else.  There’s no religion in the world except the religion of the Bible that has in it prophecy.  The reason is very apparent.  If a Buddhist or a Muslim were to try to prophesy, the foolishness and the ignorance of the prophet, of the devotee, would be most apparent.  He doesn’t know the future.  Only God knows the future.

So what Satan does—who cannot create anything, and who does not know the future, and who’s not omniscient—what Satan does is, he counterfeits prophecy.  He counterfeits the knowledge of the future.  And he does it through necromancers, and mediums, and diviners, and astrologers, and witches, and sorcerers—against which the Word of God fiercely inveighs.  I haven’t time to read the Scriptures, such as Exodus 22:18, where God says a witch shall not be allowed to live.  I haven’t time to read Leviticus 19 or Leviticus 20, but I will read this passage from Deuteronomy.  Deuteronomy 18, beginning at verse 10: “There shall not be found among you one that maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire”—to offer his children to Molech; and in the same breath—”nor one that useth divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch, or a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer.  For these are an abomination unto the Lord” [Deuteronomy 18:10-12].

All right, a third way that demonic activity and attack is manifest and demonstrated in our midst: Paul says in 1 Timothy 4:1, that the aberrations from the Holy Scriptures, the wisdom of God, is the doctrine of demons, the doctrine of demons.  And in 2 Corinthians 11, he refers to false apostles [2 Corinthians 11:13].  What he’s saying is a harsh thing.  When a man, for example, in the pulpit stands up or when a man in the professorial chair lectures in a doctrine, contrary to the revelation and Word of God, it is an evil and foul spirit that is speaking and preaching through him!  It’s an awesome aberration!  It is something that God looks upon in terrible judgment.  And the reason, of course, I think is obvious.  When you lead astray the house and the people of God, and when you teach false doctrine, you are sowing the seeds of the evil one, the seeds of hurt and destruction.  But that’s one of the ways that the satanic power attacks the academic community and the homiletical community—the preaching community, the church of God.  It’s a way Satan has of antagonizing and destroying the truth of the one great Savior, our Lord Jesus.

All right, a fourth way that the satanic powers attack today: Paul says in 2 Corinthians 4:4 that the god of this world blinds those who would come to the light of the gospel of the Son of God.  And that idea that Paul there presents is oft repeated in the Holy Scriptures.  It is satanic power that haunts the soul of the man that would come in saving faith to Christ.  Now I have met that, as you have, in a thousand different ways.  When you try to win the Muslim to Christ, you are confronted with the spirit of resistance and disobedience and unbelief; it is harsh and cruel and hard.  You meet that same spirit, a demonic spirit, if you seek to testify to the Buddhist, or to the Hindu, or to the Shintoist; it is a tragic reality.  The spirit of unbelief and rejection possesses that entire vast kingdom of the Muslim, or the Hindu, or the Shintoist, or the Buddhist.  Now you meet that same spirit of unbelief and rejection in a materialistic Western world, a materialistic America: the atheist, the secularist, the humanist, the materialist.  These are possessed by an evil spirit of rejection and unbelief.  And when you stand before such an one, you sense and feel that spirit of confrontation and rejection.  That’s the kingdom of Satan.

May I speak of just one other in this brief summary review, a fifth way that you see the activity of the demonic powers of fallen Lucifer?  There is no such thing in the Bible, no such suggestion even made in the Bible of the possession, of the inhabiting, of the control of a human heart, a human soul, a human life, a human personality, by a good angel, a good spirit.  There’s no beginning of a suggestion.  You see, it is God that seeks the throne of your heart, of your soul.  And the angels that love our Lord Jesus and love you are called in Hebrews 1:14, “ministering spirits.”  Or as Jesus referred to them—talking about children—they are guardian angels that watch over us [Matthew 18:10].  All of the good angels, all of them without exception, all of the beautiful precious angels of God minister to us, and they exalt our Lord Jesus, and they are happy.  The Bible says so.  When just one somebody turns to Jesus, the angels in heaven and the saints in their presence rejoice because Jesus is enthroned in our hearts and in our lives and in our souls [Luke 15:10].  He is the King where He ought to be.  Like B. J. Glasscock says, God wants us: our hearts, our souls, our personalities, our lives, our talents.  He wants us; He wants to be King of our hearts and of our lives.   And all of the good angels rejoice in that; they point to Jesus, they rejoice when He is exalted in our lives.

The Bible teaches us that so many of the things that hurt us are due to the weaknesses of our sinful nature.  The Bible calls it the works of the flesh.  For example, in the fifth chapter of the Book of Galatians, you have that familiar verse, “The works of the flesh are manifest.  They are adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, murders, drunkenness, reveling, and such like” [Galatians 5:19-21].  There is a whole list of the sins that we fall into that are due to our fleshly fallen nature.  They are not evidence of the attack of demons, of evil spirits.  We’re just sinful people.  We are born that way, the Bible says.  We were conceived that way, the Scriptures say [Psalm 51:5].  And our fallen nature is evident in every area of our lives.  My mind is fallen; I don’t think precious thoughts all the time.  My heart is fallen; I don’t desire what is beautiful and holy all the time.  My will is fallen; I don’t volitionally choose what is right all the time.  I am a fallen creature, and the sins of the flesh are manifest in our lives.  It is not due to an attack of demons.  It is because we are fleshly, fallen, sinful people.

How does the demon attack the Christian; the foul evil demonic kingdom of Satan?  Now he does it this way, according to the Bible, just reading the Holy Scriptures: a demon cannot possess a child of God, he cannot do it.  The child of God is the home, the temple—so Paul says in 1Corinthians chapter 6—the heart, the body is the temple of the Holy Spirit [1 Corinthians 6:19].  And as such, a demon cannot possess, he cannot inhabit the child of God.  But what he can do, and what he does do in many instances, he influences, he invades, he hurts, he destroys.

An evil spirit; he entices us and lures us and lulls us into his territory.  He triumphs and gloats over every inch that he can gain.  You put it down in your life when you pick up those pornographic magazines and look at pornographic movies, you put it down: you’re in his territory.  You put it down when you go to the bar and they dispense there for you the number one hurtful drug is alcohol, and all the other things that follow after those bars and in those bars, you put it down: you’re in Satan’s territory.  And when you go to a gambling casino or you sit down at the gambler’s table, you put it down: you’re in Satan’s territory, and you will not escape!  There will be attacks against you that you cannot control and you’re not equal to!

It is tragic how Satan can lure and entice the child of God and destroy his heart, and destroy his testimony, and destroy his faith, and destroy his commitment, and destroy his home, and destroy his house, and destroy his hope.  That’s Satan.  I have to close, I cannot.

How do you overcome?  How are you triumphant?  Revelation 12:11: “And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, Jesus, and by the word of their testimony.”  May I point out to you just one thing in that?  Why don’t you try it sometime and see if God’s Word is true.  “They overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony.”  When you are ever in a group, ever in a group, and they’re cursing, or they are gambling, or they are carousing, or they are promiscuous, or they are unworthy in any kind of a group, you just say something good for Jesus and see what happens.  See what happens.  They will melt before you, and the satanic powers of Lucifer flee before you when you witness and testify to the loving grace of our Lord.  It’s another world.  It’s a new creation.  Try it.  See for yourself.