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Now, here's today's message from Pastor Skip Heitzig. And as he was praying, an angel came from heaven and, in human form, appeared to Daniel and said, Daniel, from the day you started praying, I was dispatched to give you some insight and revelation into the future. But it took me 21 days to get here, Daniel, because on the way I had to fight a spirit prince of Persia. Took me 21 days to withstand him. But I'm here.
I'm giving you Revelation. And then at the end, he says, We've got to go back and fight the prince of Persia and the Prince of Greece, and Michael, the angel, has to come and help me. And I think Daniel's going, what, what? What was that about? He got insight into that invisible war that is going on in areas where we don't see.
And I've always been fascinated by that passage because. The angel said, I fought the prince of Persia. As if to imply that demons by Satan are actually assigned geographical regions.
So if the Prince of Persia was that bad. What do you think the Prince of Hollywood is like? Or San Francisco, or Las Vegas, Nevada, or Albuquerque, New Mexico, or Amsterdam, or whatever. The spirit world. One of the first rules in warfare Is you got to know who your enemy is.
Not only that, but you need to know how your enemy works. The Bible says we are not ignorant of his devices. I don't know if that's true of all of us. We are not ignorant of his devices. Back in World War II, one of our generals, General George C.
Patton, was fighting the German forces of Erwin Rommel, General Rommel. And it was in North Africa, and as the Battle went on, these two generals got close enough so that Patton could actually yell out to General Rommel. And he said, Rommel. I read your book. I read your book.
What he was referring to was a book that the German general Erwin Rommel had authored entitled Infantry Attacks, where Rommel details his wartime strategy. And our general is saying, I read your book, so he knew what was coming, knew what to expect, and planned his countermove accordingly. And he won the battle.
Well, Satan didn't author a book. But God did. And in the book, God Let's the cat out of the bag. reveals what his plans are for the future. And if you think strategically for a moment, Satan would have taken every bit of that information and mounted a counterattack.
So that he, not God, would win.
Now let's put that lens on and view Scripture. You ready? Let me take you back through a few scriptures. You don't have to turn to them, but I want you to follow me now. Back in Genesis chapter 3, after Satan caused the fall of mankind in enticing Adam and Eve to do what they did.
Then God made a promise and said to Satan. I'm going to put enmity between you and the woman between your seed, your offspring and her offspring. And he, that is her offspring, He, whoever he is, eventually a he will come. And he is gonna bruise your head. And you, Satan, will bruise his heel.
In other words, he is going to have. A minor setback. you're going to have a major blow. His heel will be affected, your head will be crushed.
Now, if I were to make you a promise, I would never do this by the way, but let's just say. Before the service, I came up, gave you a hug, shook your hand, and said, Hey, listen, after the service, I'm going to crush your head. God bless you. Have a nice day. If you were even remotely believing that I was going to do that, you would want more information and then you would strategize a counter move based upon the information you receive.
So Satan gets a promise. You're going down. You're going to be crushed.
So, what does he do?
Well, in Genesis chapter 4, I believe it's Satan that inspired Cain to kill Abel. Abel was righteous before God, God received his worship. Cain kills Abel. Abel is now dead. Cain becomes cursed.
They're out of the picture. Satan probably wiped his brow and said, I just averted. the one who's gonna crush my head. thinking maybe that's the one. God raises up another line through Seth.
Time goes on. We come to Genesis chapter six. Satan inspires. such a wickedness on the earth. Such violence That the race becomes unredeemable, and God decides, I'm going to destroy the entire population of planet Earth.
Except for eight people. who are kept alive on an ark. And they repopulate the earth, and a new civilization emerges, and Abraham comes, and Isaac comes, and Jacob comes, and we come to Genesis 27. And I believe it was Satan that inspired Esau to want to kill Jacob. Because Jacob was the promised seed.
that the scripture speaks about. We come then to Exodus chapter one, and the Pharaoh in Egypt has this crazy rule. that every Hebrew male child should be killed. That's radical. He says, if it's a girl, let it live.
If it's a boy, kill it. Throw it in the Nile and let it drown. Why? I think he was an agent of Satan trying to destroy the Jews through whom the seed, the Messiah, would come. We keep going in the Bible, where we read passages like the book of 1 Samuel, where King Saul.
Wants to kill David. Why David? David's the royal line. God promised. All of his hope.
Would be found in the seed, in the offspring. I've came to David. We keep following history and we come to this really crazy passage. In fact, if you've read it, you probably passed over it and not even noticed the fine print. There was a king named Ahaziah who died.
When Ahaziah died, his mother Aphalia, this is Second Kings 11. Or 2 Chronicles chapter 22. Athaliah. Yeah. She decides, listen to this, to put to death all of the royal heirs.
in Judah. All the royal heirs. If all the royal heirs are killed, David has no offspring. And the promise that God made to David for the Messiah can't happen. All of them are killed, except one.
One little baby named Joash, still nursing, is hidden until he's seven years old and he emerges as the king, and the lineage continues. And this stuff happens throughout the Old Testament until we get to the New Testament. Jesus is born in Bethlehem.
So, what does Herod say? All those baby boys in Bethlehem, kill them all. What's that about? It's a satanic attempt to destroy the seed. Jesus emerges, grows up.
Satan takes him to the pinnacle of the temple and says, You know, you ought to jump down. Quoting a scripture out of context, hoping that Jesus would jump and perhaps. and is live. We come to the Gospel of Luke chapter 4. Jesus is in the synagogue at Nazareth, proclaims himself to be God's chosen one.
They take him to the brow of the hill on which the city is built, and they want to thrust him over. And this happens throughout the Bible because it's attack, counter-attack, attack, countermeasure. It's an invisible war. And it's all framed, by the way, in the last book of the Bible. You know, my teacher used to say, All the answers are in the back of the book.
And thus it is in the book of Revelation. Listen to this warfare. He says, John says, I saw a sign in heaven, a woman clothed with the sun and the moon and the twelve stars. We know that to be an image of Israel from Genesis 37. I saw that.
Then he said, I looked and I saw a large red dragon with seven heads and ten horns. His tail dragged down a third of the stars, which he threw to the earth. He stood before the woman as she was about to give birth to her male child. to devour the baby as soon as it was born. Satan, the dragon, has always wanted to kill any offspring and, if necessary, all of the Jews to prevent the Messiah from coming so that the promise could not be fulfilled.
Look at it this way. Here's the premise. Let's think strategically. If God's plan of redemption requires the existence of a nation, and the continuance of the nation. If you can destroy that nation, You can defeat God.
If you destroy the nation of the Jews, you can keep God from fulfilling all the promises he made to the Jews.
So just destroy the nation. That was tried on several occasions, even in the Old Testament book of Esther, when Haman put out an edict to kill all of the Jews in the kingdom. Hitler kill all of the Jews. Keep God from fulfilling his promises.
So there's a coexisting invisible world, there's a conflict in the invisible world. Number three, there are convicts in the invisible world. You're listening to Connect with Skip Heitzig Weekend Edition. Your support helps reach people every day with biblical truth that brings hope, encouragement, and direction for real life. And this month we'd love to thank you with a special collection of resources designed to help you grow stronger in your faith.
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Now, here's more from Pastor Skip. Verse 19, I draw your attention to that phrase, spirits in. Prison. Let's get at that. Prison, what is that?
If you know your Bible, you know Revelation 9 calls this prison the bottomless pit. The abyss, the Greek word abyssas. It is the realm of fallen spirits. And it's such a place.
Something happened that these spirits are kept or incarcerated there.
Something really bad they did to cause them. To be there, so much so that other demons do not want to go there. Remember in Luke chapter 8, the man who was demon-possessed from Gadara sees Jesus. And he begs Jesus, whatever you do, don't throw us into the. Abyss.
Abbasas. Don't put us there. In fact, the demons say: What are you doing here? Have you come to destroy us before the time? Don't throw us into the abyss.
What time? Revelation says all the demons, including the devil, will be incarcerated in the abyss, the bottomless pit, for a thousand years.
So it's like the demons are saying, Are you off schedule here? You're way before the time. Don't throw us into that. Abyss. So Who are these spirits, and why are they there?
And what did they do to get put there? Let me give you a couple of texts. You can write them down, look at them later if you please. One is found in the book of Jude, the other is found in the book of 2 Peter. Jude writes in that one chapter book, verse 6 and 7: The angels who did not keep their proper domain, but left their own abode, he reserved in everlasting chains under darkness for the judgment of that great day.
And he goes on to mention the time of Noah. In the next verse. 2 Peter 2, verse 4. For if God did not spare the angels when they sinned, but sent them to hell, putting them into gloomy dungeons to be held for judgment. There's some group of demons that have been incarcerated at some point, and it's identified by Jude, by Peter, and here by Peter.
At the time of Noah, So If you remember back in Genesis chapter 6, the whole Noah flood thing. It says, In those days, mankind began to multiply on the face of the earth, and the sons of God. Saw the daughters of men that they were. Beautiful, attractive fair. And they took them as wives whomever they wished.
And this weird offspring was the result. And violence filled the earth, and this race of people, it was so bad, God's only solution was to destroy planet Earth.
Now real briefly. The sons of God. Saw the daughters of men. What is that all about?
Okay, hold on to your seatbelt.
Sons of God is a Hebrew term when it was written originally. Bene ha Elohim.
Sons of God is an Old Testament term for angelic beings. Why are they called sons of God? Because they're a direct creation of God, a one-on-one creation.
Sons of God saw the daughters of men. According to the oldest Jewish interpretations and the earliest church fathers, these were fallen angels that acted so wickedly they overstepped their boundaries. of their realm left the spirit realm and entered the human realm. to cohabitate with women. You're immediately thinking, that's not possible, is it?
That's not possible. It is possible if these demons To get these women possessed. Men. Demon possessed Humans Attaching themselves to other humans who are women. Demon possession is very common in the New Testament.
It certainly could have happened in the Old Testament.
So these demon-possessed men could have seen these women in some attractive but perversely attractive, lascivious way that produced a generation of children that were unredeemable. Why else would God destroy the entire world?
So much so that not even 120 years Of Noah's preaching caused one person to turn and repent, except Noah's family.
Now just imagine that. You know how long Noah was in the ark when the flood happened? One year. You know how long it took to build the ark? 120 years.
Which shows us that the ark wasn't just about saving him, but also about preaching to the world. Talk about long-suffering. Takes me 120 years to build a boat I'm going to be in for a year. That's a lot of preaching. He was a preacher of righteousness, the Bible said.
And through his lifestyle and through his words, he got the message of judgment out: the warning, no one responded. And so God sent a flood and judged the earth.
Meanwhile, took those demons that caused such havoc and incarcerated them in this. Prism. These are the wicked of the wicked, the worst of the worst. A few years ago, I was in Scotland. I went to a prison to do some ministry, and after I did sort of some general population ministry in jail.
The Word said, Now we're going to take you to the worst place. I said, pardon me, so we have a prison in our prison. Where the 10 worst criminals, most of them mass murderers in Scotland, are kept. We're going to let you hang out with them for a couple hours. I thought, oh, wonderful.
And it really was great ministry, but they were considered the worst of the worst.
Now, the fact that Peter mentions this but does not give any detail. And the fact that we have to go into such detail shows that his original audience was far more familiar with it than we are. You'll grant that.
So perhaps by the time the crucifixion rolled around, these demons thought that God had lost and they had won. They're about to be very shocked. About to be very surprised. Here's what I want you to see. These are powerful demons.
So much so that they have to be incarcerated. But that's my point. God being more powerful. Incarcerates them. God is all-powerful.
And holds the boundaries of what is allowable and not. And if a line is crossed, You're in jail. Do not Pass, go, do not collect $200. I remember when I was dabbling in the occult before I was saved. This is one thing that really tipped me over the edge.
In a good way. I was dabbling in some very, very powerful experiences, and I really enjoyed the empowerment that I felt because of those demonic experiences. But one day, The thought struck me. If there's this much power on the wrong side, On the dark side, on the bad side, if there really is a God who created this other thing, there is so much more power on the right side. And there is.
These powerful demons. were incarcerated by God. We have just a couple of moments to finish up, so let me give you the fourth statement. There was a conquest in the invisible world.
Something happened, verse 22. He has gone into heaven. Jesus, after his resurrection, ascended into heaven and is at the right hand of God. Notice angels and authorities and powers having been made subject to him. Jesus went and he proclaimed, he preached, verse 19.
See the word, he preached to the spirits in prison. He preached something. The word is que-russo, means make a proclamation. Not preached in terms of evangelism, preached, like, hey, you know what? You have an opportunity now to get out of hell if you just pray this prayer.
None of that. Peter would have used the word, you and Galidzo. Evangelism. But he used the word keruso to herald something, to make an announcement. A herald was somebody the king would dispatch to a town to make an announcement or, after the war was won, make a proclamation of victory.
So after All of the attempts failed. And Jesus was crucified, and they were probably just wiping their hands thinking, finally, he's gone. They were disappointed. And the disappointment came the day the resurrected, living Christ came and proclaimed victory to them. War's over, boys.
You lost. You lost. I want to close with a scary thought and then a good thought. These demons Incarcerated in the abyss.
Well, one day Be released. Revelation says the abyss was opened. And demons come out. and so pervert the earth. That Jesus said, as it was in the days of Noah.
So it will be in the time of the coming of the Son of Man. They're going to be released for a period of time during the Great Tribulation. Before they get reincarcerated with the devil and all of his angels again during those end times. But here's what I want you to know because you're going. Great, I feel so encouraged by this.
One-third of the angels fell. One third of the original Heavenly Hosts are demons and they hate you. And you're in their crosshairs. If one-third fell, it means how many did not fall. Tell me.
Two-thirds did not fall. Which tells me Satan is way outnumbered. and all of his demons way outnumbered by the good guys.
So instead of saying, there's devils, there's demons, I bind this, I bind that, why don't you just say, two-thirds are on my side, and Jesus is living inside of me, and greater is he that is in me than he that is in the world. This can be a cakewalk. There's actually way more that I have to say. Just don't have the time to say it.
So I want you to walk away encouraged that you are on the winning team and you have stepped out of darkness into light. And what that means. Yes, you have seen. into the really real world, but as you and I walk in the real world, Keep in mind whose side you're on. We're so glad you joined us today on Connect with Skip Heitzig.
Before you go, here's a reminder. When you give $30 or more this month, we'll send you biblical wisdom for everyday living as our thanks. This special collection of four Lifestyle booklets from Pastor Skip Heitzig offers biblical encouragement for prayer, joy, forgiveness, and standing firm when life feels uncertain. Your support helps keep this Bible teaching ministry reaching people around the world with the life-changing truth of God's Word. Give today at connectwithskippe.com slash offer or call 800-922-8888.
We'll see you next time for more verse-by-verse teaching of God's Word here on Connect the Skip Heitzig Weekend Edition. Make a connection, never foot. Of the crossing Castle burning. Connect with Skip Heitzig is a presentation of connection communications, connecting you to God's never-changing truth in ever-changing times.
