What the Bible teaches about angels, demons, Satan, and spiritual warfare.
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 08113. Getting clear on what angels are is surprisingly difficult, because most of us learned the subject from Christmas plays, greetings cards and films before we ever opened a concordance. The popular version has wings, harps, halos and a distinct shortage of anything the Bible actually says. So let me take the popular picture…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 08112. Whether angels exist is a question I am asked far more often by Christians than by unbelievers, which tells you something about the state of our teaching. Most believers have absorbed the idea that angels belong to the decorative edges of the faith, somewhere near Christmas cards and children’s talks, rather than to…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 08132. The phrase familial spirits gets used in two quite different ways, and separating them is the first job, because one usage points to something Scripture genuinely condemns and the other points to a teaching I do not think Scripture supports at all. In older Bibles you will meet familiar spirits, which is occult…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 08111. What actually happens under hypnosis is less mysterious than most people assume, and getting that clear is the first step to answering whether it opens doors to demonic influence. The popular picture, borrowed almost entirely from stage shows and films, is of a person switched off and taken over. That is not what…
Reading Time: 9 minutesQuestion 08131. The question of why God create Satan in the first place is usually asked with more feeling than curiosity, and I understand why. If God knew what this creature would become, and made him anyway, then the trail of misery running through human history seems to lead back to a decision God took…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 08128. Asking whether demons perform miracles usually follows something a person has witnessed or heard about, and the question behind it is a practical one. If something extraordinary happens in a meeting, does that settle whose power is at work? My answer is that demons perform miracles in a limited and derivative sense, and…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 08110. Whether martial arts are spiritually dangerous depends almost entirely on which martial arts you mean and who is teaching them, which is why a blanket answer will always be wrong for somebody. The category covers everything from an Olympic combat sport to a discipline that opens with meditation before a shrine. So rather…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 08109. Whether yoga practice is spiritually dangerous is a question that divides thoughtful Christians, and I want to handle it in a way that respects both sides rather than declaring one of them unspiritual. I have friends who would not set foot in a class and friends who go every Tuesday, and both can…
Reading Time: 9 minutesQuestion 08127. Whether Satan required permission to attack Job’s children is not a puzzle for the study, because anybody who has buried someone they love and then read Job 1 knows exactly how sharp it is. The text plainly shows Satan seeking and receiving permission to attack, and ten young people die within a few…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 08108. The question of whether Eastern meditation can open doors to demons needs a definition before it needs an answer, because the word meditation is now doing duty for at least three unrelated activities and people talking about it are frequently talking past each other. There is biblical meditation, which Scripture commands. There is…