“My flesh is caked with worms and dust …”
(Job 7:5, NKJV)
Last week’s teachings brought us to a very important point in our study of the chosen believer’s high calling, and irrevocably linked it to his/her deepest wound. All who fell from before time/another reality (Rev. 2:5), face this earthly reality, called the realm of the dead, and fight the intimate relation to the worms, here the quintessential opponent, who feed off of the rhema-identities of the unfulfilled calling, or the rhema-calling which is never made manifest. The word that He spoke over you contains the recreation potential from before time. But it is held in balance by the exact opposite of that word. The words of Christ carry the power and the glory of God. We then said that the glory and the power of Satan is obviously carried by the words of Satan.
This all does not occur in an imagined kingdom of darkness, but in the kingdoms of the world. From 1John 5:19 we do know that “the whole world lies under the sway of the wicked one”. The “kingdom of Christ and of God” is built through the increase of the rhema-words and the restoration of the glory and power that is manifested WITHIN them. The kingdoms of the world are built by the increase of the rimmah-words. Now we will begin to see that the Evil one is to a large extent manifested through the counter of our rhema-words. Satan increases in the Body of adversaries that oppose Christ. 1John 4:2-3 makes this very clear: “By this you know the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God, and every spirit that does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is not of God. And this is the spirit of the Antichrist, which you have heard was coming, and is now already in the world.”
The incarnation of God as man (1Tim. 3:16), also the incarnation of Jesus/God in those who are born again (Gal. 3:16) also has a counter: the incarnation of Satan by demons. Ponder the implications of this truth.
We thus now have these two corporate manifestations in the cosmic drama: Satan and Jesus the Christ. Jesus increases in the Christ, and according to Matthew 4 Satan is the adversary of the Christ. Satan is thus the adversary of all of us in the Christ, and increases in the collection of adversaries. If we think about it in another way, this collection of adversaries of Christ form a collective counterfeit to the cloud of witnesses.
One could thus consider Satan as the collective manifestation of all rimmah-words, and they are legion, for they are many. This would for instance explain what the origin is of the “unclean spirits” (Matt. 10:1), “evil spirits” (Luke 7:21), the spirits that “are subject to you” (Luke 20:10), “deceiving spirits” (1Tim. 4:1), spirits who “whisper and mutter” (Isa. 8:19), and 1Pet. 3:19’s “spirits in prison”! There are evil spirits, and then there are spirits that are “worse than the first” (Luke 11:26)!
The apostle John warns in 1 John 4:1: “Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits, whether they are of God; because many false prophets have gone out into the world.” There are thus spirits who are from within God, and spirits who are from within Satan. The spirits sent from God, are the messengers, or angels. Heb. 1:14 calls them “ministering spirits sent forth to minister for those who will inherit salvation”. The spirits sent by Satan are also messengers, or: angels of Satan (as Paul refers to them in 2Cor. 12:7). Rev. 16:14 describes them as follows: “For they are spirits of demons, performing signs, which go out to the kings of the earth and of the whole world, to gather them to the battle of that great day of God Almighty.”
In the last verse the activity of “spirits of demons” is clearly presented as part of their work in “the sons of disobedience” (Eph. 5:6). Earlier in this letter, in Eph. 5:2-8, Paul elucidates this when he speaks of the “sons of disobedience” (verse 6), linking their behaviour and life to a manifestation of the dark or carnal nature, as earlier when they were not saved and were indeed “darkness” (Eph. 5:8). Because of this our walk was directed according to “the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience” (Eph. 2:2). Let us ponder this verse for a moment:
- All who are unsaved, as well as believers who are disobedient, are directed by demonic spirits/angels, who also work within them.
- This brings about that they are formed according to “the course of this world”. Different translations offer this as:
- “according to the worldliness of this world” (JMNT)
- “[conducted yourselves] according to the age [fig., the practices] of this world” (ALTNT)
- “You were following the course and fashion of this world [were under the sway of the tendency of this present age]” (AMP).
- This pattern of worldliness that is formed in man through worldliness itself, happens through the mould that the demonic spirits manifest WITHIN YOU. In John 8:44 Jesus makes this clear to the Pharisees: “You are of yourfather the devil, and the desires of your father you want to do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own resources, for he is a liar and the father of it.” This means that you are formed and that your identity is dictated by the seed of the snake (Gen. 3:15) – this is why you start to resemble your demonic father, the one in whose mould you are continuously shaped.
- It is thus very possible that the people of the world, as well as believers, fall into “the snare of the devil” (1Tim. 3:7). According to 2Tim. 2:16 this means that the devil sets the snare, and are thus “taken captive by him to do his will”!
- What exactly does “according to the prince of the power of the air” mean?
- The ABP defines it more lucidly as “the ruler of the authority of the air”, and the CJB as “the Ruler of the Powers of the Air”. It is very important to know that Satan legitimately gained power over the world, and that this power was given to him by God. This is explicitly spelled out in Luke 4:6, where Satan says to Jesus on the mountain of temptation: “All this authority … and their glory… has been delivered to me and I give it to whomever I wish.” If Satan is then the “prince”, there is a large assortment of associated titles of rulership that he can lay claim to, as the BDB presents: “prince, ruler, leader, chief, chieftain, official, captain, vassal, noble, official (under king), general, commander (military), head, overseer (of other official classes), princes (of religious office), elders (of representative leaders of people), merchant-princes (of rank and dignity), patron-angel, Ruler of rulers (of God), warden”. This position is one of honour, of princely status, a ceded form of authority or headship.
- Because it is true what Matt. 28:18 spells out in the words of Jesus: “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth”, it means that Satan cannot rule without the explicit approval of God, the king of his Kingdom. Remember this. It does not mean that God is part of every action or event that Satan initiates, but Evil is allowed to capture people in the kingdom of the world, to mislead them, to blind them. Remember Isa. 54:16: “Behold, I have created the blacksmith who blows the coals in the fire, who brings forth an instrument for his work; and I have created the spoiler to destroy.” (Note the emphasis that is placed on the Proper Name.) Also, Jesus’ words to Pilate in John 19:11: “Jesus answered, ‘You could have no power at all against Me unless it had been given you from above. Therefore the one who delivered Me to you has the greater sin.’”
- The word “air” in this particular verse is for instance presented by Strong as “the atmospheric region”. Yet in the root understanding of the word it is instead defined as “from aemi (to breathe unconsciously, i.e. respire; by analogy, to blow).” There is a large difference, even an irreconcilable difference, between these two interpretations – one is outside man, in the air, and the other is the air WITHIN man! When the Word speaks of our position in Christ, it is always linked to a position IN THE AIR, meaning IN THE HEIGHTS, meaning IN THE SPIRITUAL REALM, meaning IN THE HEAVENS. Eph. 2:6 (AMP) articulates this well: “And He raised us up together with Him and made us sit down together [giving us joint seating with Him] in the heavenly sphere [by virtue of our being] in Christ Jesus (the Messiah, the Anointed One).” This happens NOW! Being caught up to the heavens, which people interpret as the rapture in, for instance, 1Thess. 4:17, is rather concerned with an “upwards” movement in power and authority, not in physical altitude. Rom. 6:5 (AMP) makes it clear: “For if we have become one with Him by sharing a death like His, we shall also be [one with Him in sharing] His resurrection [by a new life lived for God]” ON EARTH.
- Based on these two specific texts, it can seem as though Satan does indeed have his own kingdom:
- 12:26 – “If Satan casts out Satan, he is divided against himself. How then will his kingdom stand?” And:
- 16:10: “Then the fifth angel poured out his bowl on the throne of the beast, and his kingdom became full of darkness; and they gnawed their tongues because of the pain.”
But Satan does not have his own kingdom. What he does have is a deciding influence and rulership over the kingdoms of the world. Satan’s kingdom is the kingdoms of the world where he rules in and through people, social and financial systems, governments, edicts, religious dictates and rituals, and more. This occurs largely through a carnal or earthly or natural way of thinking and acting, a way in which “we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others” (Eph. 2:3). This explains the state of the world as we know it today, and of the unregenerated man, his “flesh caked with worms and dust” (Job 7:5).
- Selah: Ponder the manifestation of the devil within man.
- Read: 31-36; Deut. 1-3
- Memorise: 1:2 (why would this verse be important?)
