Angels And Demons Series

Angels and Demons (AKA Created Spiritual Beings)

Christianity 101

CCCAG November 14th, 2019

Intro:

When I got saved in 1993 I was considered to be one of those people that was a true trophy of grace. What I mean by that is I was probably the least likely person to ever come into a relationship with Jesus because of my lifestyle of rampant sin. Yearbook

When I first started attending church everyone quickly learned that I love to read so everyone was giving me books on Christian topics and even Christian fiction. I devoured these books along with the Bible. If you can believe this- there was a time before the Internet so if there is nothing particularly interesting on TV reading is what we used to do. There were many a Saturday were all Tammie and I did was laid together on the couch and each read a book , finished the book and then trade off and start reading the book the other one was reading.

One of these book series that shaped my early understanding of created spiritual beings such as angels and demons was called “Piercing the Darkness” by Frank Peretti. This fictional book portrays angels and demons fighting the spiritual battles that exist all around us.

While highly entertaining, these books do not portray the biblical truth about Angels or demons and it took a long time and probably Bible school for me to get an accurate picture of what these created spiritual beings on both sides are actually like.

Angels and demons are a subject of great fascination in our culture.

I don't think there's been a time in my lifetime but there hasn't been at least 1 television show that deals with Angels. One of the most famous TV shows, “Highway to Heaven “starring Michael Landon as a human who becomes a Guardian Angel.

This show ran for that ran for 5 seasons and either intentionally or unintentionally shaped many people's idea of what an Angel is. Other TV shows like touched by an Angel further push the idea of Angels being just like you and I with a couple of extra abilities.

I think that we can agree that both Hollywood and TV shows have taking large creative liberties with the idea of what an Angel is.

Even more so they have taken liberties when it comes to the evil side of created spiritual beings and how we view the devil, demons, witchcraft, and the supernatural. TV right now is filled with these programs. In movies, probably one of the most famous examples of this is a movie called the exorcist in which a young girl is possessed by Satan himself. I watched this movie before I came to Christ as I used to love to watch that kind of thing and it's pretty bad.

If you have never seen it please don't watch it-it's very blasphemous and not even a remotely accurate portrayal of demonic possession or how we deal with it. If anything, that movie will decrease your faith and what it means to be a child of the king of Kings and the power we all have over the demonic realm.

Today I want to cut through all of what the world is trying to tell us about these created spiritual beings- mainly angels and demons, but also some of the other beings mentioned in the bible.

I want to see what God's word actually says about them and what they mean to us in the here and now and hopefully dispel some of the fiction that might have crept into our belief system.

We're going to be looking at a lot of different Bible verses; so many Bible verses that I may not pause much before I read them, but if you want to keep up, the list in order on the back of your bulletin.

Just to clarify- I’m not preaching or teaching tradition this morning. Our belief’s and measure of truth should be anchored in the bible. If you have questions about any of this, please wait until the end and we will answer them during our Q&A.

Let's ask God's blessing and help as we delve into this lesson

Prayer

So I've organized this lesson in 3 parts. The first part will be dealing with created spiritual beings on Gods side. The second part will be created spiritual beings who are part of the rebellion and follow Satan. The 3rd part will be a very brief look at how both sides interact with us today.

Before we get into that though I want to make one very important point to put the rest of this message and lesson into perspective for you. You may have noticed that I have been saying the same phrase over and over again- that’s intentional.