Blurry Creatures - EP: 180 The Prince of Darkness with Doug Van Dorn

Episode Date: July 26, 2023

Doug Van Dorn returns to show to discuss the enemy. If there is a kingdom of darkness and an army of evil spiritual forces making war on the righteous, then there is inevitably a hierarchy of command and leadership. The bible speaks of an enemy of our soul, and while there are many specifics in the text about this entity, he goes by many names across the millennia. The ancients called him the Nahash, the Dragon, the Accuser, the Devil, the Satan, Lucifer, and the Adversary, among other titles, including the Prince of Darkness. Who is this entity? Is he a singular fallen angel or are there multiple entities that take on these roles and names? Author, pastor, researcher and frequent guest of the show, Doug Van Dorn helps us unpack the biblical information to better understand our enemy and gain a greater perspective on his identity, tactics and plan to corrupt and destroy humanity. Intro song: The Midnight Nocturnal contact: [e-mail] blurrycreatures.com Socials instagram.com/blurrycreatures facebook.com/blurrycreatures twitter.com/blurrycreatures Music Kyle Monroe: tinytaperoom.com Mastering: ironwingstudios.com Outro Song: TimeCop1983: timecop1983.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen, Luke, we know that we live in a world where everything is fake, fake food, fake clouds, fake news, everything's fake. And you know what? You get tired of it. And you're just like, if I want to buy a shirt or something nice, can I just, please give me something real. Quinn's is an amazing company that does high quality everyday essentials. So we're moving in. We're in spring here. We're moving in the summer. Maybe you need to refresh that wardrobe so you're ready for the summer, t-shirts, shorts. These are everyday essentials made from premium materials. Here's a chance to refresh. your wardrobe for the summer at the price that's 50 to 60% less than similar brands. And we always ask, how do they do this, Nate? And it's because they work directly with ethical factories, cut out middlemen.

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You're in America's hat. You want the goods. You can get it now. Go to Q-U-I-N-C-E dot com slash blurry for free shipping and 365-day returns. Quins.com slash blurry. Luke so often, people email us and they have this story. They're out in their woods and they're looking in the bushes and they got, what's that? And when you are pouring your dog food and your dog's bowl, that's the last thing you want to say. What is that? What is the stuff coming out of this bag? You know, I don't think a lot of us think about maybe what we feed our dogs. And that's why we partner with rough greens. Most of us would love to have our dogs live as long as possible. I mean, I just lost my dog in December. And I would have just, I would have loved more time with Carl. And one of the things you can do to get more time with your dog is to feed them better. Dog owners don't usually realize that live nutrients, that their dog

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I mean, they were talking 12 and 13 years old. And Rough Greens really made a difference in their energy levels and the pep in their step. So if you want to do what we did, you can get a free jumpstart trial bag for your dog today. Just cover the shipping. Go to Roughgreens.com and use discount code blurry. That's RUFFF greens.com discount code blurry. Rough Greens makes any dog food better. They described these guys as looking like dragons in form, but having

hands and feet like a man in the apocalypse of Abraham or in this strange book called the Testament of Amram Dead Sea they said that these watchers were terrifying in appearance like a serpent and then they wore like cloaks of many colored but also dark and then their appearances like a visage of a viper so you have like man-snake kind of descriptions for what these watches are like and so it would make sense that you would then call him a

serpent because that's the general appearance of what these creatures are like he doesn't have to be a beast he could be a heavenly being so then you come to this word nahash which is the word we translate serpent and when it's used as a noun it means a serpent but when it's used as an adjective it can mean the shining one but if it's a verb it could mean divination like as in witchcraft so all these kind of ideas lend themselves to this not being a beast like a snake but some sort of of a different kind of an entity. And then when you go to the rest of the Bible, you learn, sure, he's fallen angel.

So of course that's what he should be thought of in Genesis 3. You just heard the voice of Doug Van Dorn, author, pastor, researcher. Doug came on today to talk about one of the blurious creatures in this world, which is Satan. Doug likes to go big. He likes to talk about the biggest characters in the story. And if you listen to some of our previous episodes, you know what I'm talking about.

Doug's a great guy, good friend, and love to go. to get out in the weeds sometimes and give us more context and clues to the things that we grew up hearing in church or reading our own Bibles. Like, what are some more context here to help better understand that? And on Blurrier Creatures, that's what we're trying to do, give you guys better answers, more clues to the paranormal things in our world, to the blurry creatures that maybe you've seen or experienced. If you'd like to support the podcast so many people have, blurrycreatures.com slash members. We have a pre-sale going on right now for some brand new merch, head over to our Instagram or Facebook page or our website,

blurry creatures.com, support the show, grab some new merch. You guys are awesome. Thank you to everyone who supports this podcast and keeps it going. We say it a lot, but we mean it. Without any further ado, let's get Doug Van Doren on the show and get into this one. The history of our earth is so different from what we can imagine. It's a Smithsonian, that if they found out about a large skeleton somewhere, was to go get it. I'm going to assume at least one person is right, because if one person's right

and bust the paradigm, it all goes back to the fallen chair. And the problem with the modern day church, they have a very truncated view of the supernatural. This backdrop that's just pregnant with all kinds of meaning associated with this Mount Herman event. And this guy defects from the kingdom. That's a big deal. We have a God who's defeated this guy, and we're supposed to take every thought. captive and I think the better we think about who Satan is, the better it is for us. When we have misconceptions about who he is, that causes a lot of trouble in our theology and where we love

our life. So hopefully we can clear some of that up tonight. Yeah, yeah. There is that whole he who should not be named. Does the Bible do that, Doug? Does it not name this character on purpose? That's my first question. This is a great, great question. You had one guest on. It was a while ago. and a half ago or something talking about how he he actually probably doesn't have a real name and when you start looking at all the different words that are used to describe him i think he probably has a point you know what is his actual name satan's not a name devil's not a name dragon's not a name you know you could just keep on going nahash is not a name and lucifer is like a more of a more of a modern sort of moniker correct that's a that comes from the vulgate uh in its translation of hellel ben

Chakar and Isaiah 14, although being the shining one, so it's the idea of Lucifer the Morning Star. It's not a name. It's something that describes something about what he is like, which is really what all these things are. So maybe his name was intentionally lost. Maybe he is Voldemort.

I don't know. What if his name is just Chad? Maybe that's why he doesn't want anybody to say his name because he's embarrassed about it. All the Chad's out there just unsubscribe. They just tuned out. Yeah, it's strange, right? It seems like there's a lot of, you know, don't name this character.

And I wonder if it all goes back to the dragon himself, all these cultures from all these centuries of afraid to speak things. You know, we brought on a guy today who, Luke and I did it every this morning, who went looking for this skinwalker creature. And they found it three in the morning, you know? There's some truth to that. In some ways, if you look for evil, it can find you, right? but I don't think talking about it necessarily is because Satan quotes scripture all the time.

So he has no problem talking about it. I think it's fascinating, Doug, that like this, he's always referred to sort of his attributes, nomenclature per se, right? It's like he's an accuser, he's an adversary, he's, you know, the enemy of your soul. It's always some descriptive aspect. And then people would say that it's a general thing and there probably could be many satans. But it's hard to believe, though, when you have this scene in a, in the temptation of Christ, right?

Like, this seems like it's a very specific someone, something, entity. You know, then you have the episode in Job where Satan or the accuser shows up before Yahweh and asks if you can sift Job. And it seems very much there's a thread. This is why we have you on. And we're not just postulating as a few, as these sort of layperson dummies we are.

Bring on the experts, Nate. No pressure, Doug. No pressure. All right. So let's think about some of these names, all right? What can we be solid on in terms of who this guy is, what we know from the scripture? So John Revelation 12, we'll come back to this passage a little bit later, calls him Satan and the devil and the dragon and the serpent.

So those are all found in one verse. I think he also says that in chapter 20 as well. And so here you have an overlap of four different ideas. When you start looking at the words they're used for him, You find that you can compare up verses that will say that, okay, so this is another synonym. So, for example, Leviathan. So he's not called the Leviathan by John directly, but he is called the dragon. But you find like in Isaiah 271, you find the dragon and Leviathan both coming up there together.

So that would seem to be a parallel. You have Rehab, the sea monster. So it's a different sea monster than Leviathan. She comes up in Job But again, you have her associated with the dragon You have the shining one, the Nahash, the serpent. So, you know, when he go to Genesis 3-1 Where he first appears, he's called the serpent there.

And there's a couple of things to clear up, since it's the first verse that he appears. A lot of people think that, you know, I think most kids think when they're taught in Sunday school that, well, it must be a talking snake or a possessed snake, something like that. And one of the reasons why is like a translation like the ESV that says the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field. Problem is that the word other is not in the Hebrew. So it actually says the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field.

Well, that's totally different idea. Yeah. So why would they other? Well, I think they're supplying that because they're assuming that the serpent here is a beast of the field. But if he is more crafty than any any beast of the field, then he doesn't have to be a beast of the field, he could be something else, which would make a lot of sense that he's more crafty than a cow, because he's actually a watcher from heaven. He's an ancient entity that they, you know, said, they described these guys as, as, uh, looking like dragons in form, but having hands and

feet like a man in the apocalypse of Abraham or in this strange book called the testament of Amram at the Dead Sea. They said that these watchers were terrifying in appearance like a serpent and then they wore like cloaks of many colored but also dark and then their appearances like a visage of a viper. So you have like man-snake kind of descriptions for what these watchers are like. And so it would make sense that you would then call him a serpent because that's the general appearance of what these creatures are like. He doesn't have to be a beast. He could be a heavenly being. So then you come to this word Nahash, which is the word we translate as serpent. And when it's used as a noun, it means a serpent. But when it's used as an adjective, it can mean

the shining one. So, you know, like the good, the bad and the ugly, the, uh, Pleniswood movie, the title of the movie. Oh, yeah. It can mean a shining one. But if it's a verb, it could mean divination, like as in witchcraft. So all these kind of ideas lend themselves to this not being a beast like a snake, but some sort of a different kind of an entity. And then when you go to the rest of the Bible, you learn, sure, he's a fallen angel.

So of course, that's what he should be thought of in Genesis 3. We've had this come up before. you know, the, there's a lot of descriptions of like the seraphim as being serpentine in general. Do you think there's something to that potentially? I mean, we don't know, I guess. No, I think I actually think we have more than, there's a little more than we don't know. I mean, there's still some speculation. But remember when Moses puts the serpent pole up in the wilderness?

Oh, yeah. That thing is actually called by two words. One of them is a seraphim, and then the other one is a nahash, and they used it as synonyms. Interesting. Okay. So a seraphim is a fiery, it's a fiery, fiery creature. The word bronze is actually a play on that word in the Hebrew. And bronze is like a fiery sort of a thing. So it's a fiery bronze serpentine creature. And so this is where you get the word a seraph, like in Isaiah 6, it's a fiery creature of heaven. It's guarding the throne. So when you add that with Nahash and fiery, you get exactly what people think of in their mind when they think of a seraphene. And you get the shining one too, right? You get this whole idea of shining, which I think.

Exactly. So this is in Isaiah 14, right? When this creature is said to try to usurp himself above the stars of God, he's called there the shining one son of the dawn. That's the word or the phrase that gets translated as Lucifer by Jerome in the Latin Vulgate. So here then you have a connection between the shining one of Genesis 3, if it's an adjective, and then the shining one in Isaiah 14 that I think is talking about the same creature. So wow, Doug, because I read the first four chapters of Genesis last night randomly,

just started reading it. Just trying with all this knowledge over the last three years of doing the show. And I kind of was thinking that as I was reading that, that, you know, you could see how they were maybe saying serpent, but maybe perhaps the readers all knew what they were getting at when they were saying that, right? It kind of reminds me something Heiser said that every time they use, I can't remember exactly what he said, but he was saying something every time they used a creature to describe, it was describing a spiritual being. I wish I could remember what he said. But there was some, he was trying to make a reference of how you could call it a serpent, but really the Bible was good at trying to differentiate spiritual beings when he was talking about him specific verses. Sometimes it feels like when you get that phone bill, it's like the crash site document. You can't read it.

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New customer offer for first three months only, then full-priced plan options available, taxes and fees extra. See Mintmobile for details. One of my questions is, when do you think Satan rebels originally? Okay, a great question. Yeah, so talking about his fall. So I think that, I think Isaiah and Ezekiel 28 are. both kind of getting at this question, kind of explaining a little bit of the why. So he wants to, in Isaiah, he wants to set himself above the stars of God. Stars is another reference to the same

kind of creatures that he is, but he wants to be the, you know, the big shot. And then in Ezekiel, it talks about how he became full of pride, but he was this guardian cherubim in that case of the Garden of Eden. So you have to wonder, well, what would induce pride in him? So I think a lot of people think that it was just, he was the highest created being, and he was just this glorious creature. And so it just got the better of him. And he thought he could somehow usurp God. But I don't think that that's what happened. I actually think that it's creation of man that was the problem. Because here you have this being that is given authority and rule. So some of the other titles you have to understand for these watchers would include dominions and powers and authorities and thrones, all these words that are used for. for rulership, princes, archons, those kinds of things that you hear Paul and Jesus both talking about when they're referencing them. So they're given authority, given authority to rule. But where

are they given authority to rule in the heavenly room? So then you come to Genesis 1-1 and God starts making this earth, this incredible place that we live on. And then it come to day six and he creates this man out of the ground. And then Genesis 2 kind of takes that and does like a microscope on what it was in chapter one, it really focuses on who Adam is going to be and what he's going to do. And so in both chapter one and two, he gives man this ability to rule, have dominion. Where? Here on this earth. Dominion on this earth. Well, now, wait a minute, that's a position of authority and rule, which is what Satan has in the heavenly places. So you can just picture this, right? Here's God making the greatest place in the universe, what we call earth. And the glorious

beings are watching this. Job says that they're all singing for joy when God is creating this thing. Then he makes man and he makes him out of the, he's a piece of mud is effectively what he is. He's not this brilliant, shining, glorious creature like I am. He's a, he's a ball of mud. And then God says, here, you get dominion down here on the greatest place that he's made. So when you go and read some intertestamental Jewish literature, they'll actually talk about how Satan was then told by God that he had to bow down to Adam because he's the one who's going to have dominion down here. And Satan doesn't like it. So you read this in like the life of Adam and Eve. It's an interesting take on the garden story and then what happens to fall.

And with Adam and Eve after that and their children and all this kind of stuff. But it talks in that book about how Satan refused to do it. He's like, I'm not going to I'm not going to bow down to that thing. And so that would then become the reason, the motivation for why he fell, because he wanted to have authority down here and God wouldn't give it to him. So I believe that the fall of Satan was essentially simultaneous with the creation of Adam and the garden. These other extra biblical sources, you know, you talk about the life of Adam and Eve. And it's interesting take, right? I mean, it's not canonized scripture, but since we don't really know what happened, the tradition then of this is interesting, right?

The idea that, it makes sense to me. It's a Game of Thrones thing, right? Doug, it's like this idea that we are all part of a kingdom. We've talked about this sort of ad nauseum on the show, Nate, that this is the way that God sets things up is kingdom-like, where this is a realm. In this realm, we are the regents, the vice regents, the rulers, whatever kind of vernacular you want to use,

but we were given authority here. In fact, God tells Adam to subdue the earth and all that is in it. It belongs to us. And it's interesting though, right? You have these other entities, these other Elohim as the Bible, and in Hebrew talks about, that are even given the nations, and we see in Deuteronomy. But this makes sense. I think you can pull threads.

And I actually like that because we know that the worship of anything but God is corrupting, right? And then at the same time, there's envy would enter because we are imagio. We bear the image of the Most High God. So not only we made of dirt, we look or we hold the seal of God, whether we look at the whether it's literal or not. That's a question I have for you. Do you think that's literal or do you think that just means that we carry the... Well, we look like the image of, we look like the image of God. So we are the image of God who looks like the capital image of God, which is Christ. And Christ became a man. God is a spiritual being. He doesn't have a form. So God in his bare essence doesn't look like anything.

but the way that he chose to show himself to us is through Jesus becoming one of us. So in that sense, we do bear the image of God in the way that you're talking about. But the image of God in Genesis 1 is it's especially the idea of having dominion. So dominion becomes the image of God. It's a function. It's what we do. God is the king in Genesis chapter 1. He's setting, he's creating a temple.

In fact, this is a very strange thing. When you go and read the Eugritic Bail cycle, which is kind of important for some stuff that we might talk about later, in the Bail cycle, the word there means Lord is one of the 70 sons of L. L is the high god of their pantheon, who's married or has a consort named Ashera, whom you've read about plenty times in the Old Testament. She's got a lot of poles. A lot of poles that they're worshiping in that woman. and so they have 70 sons. This is where the idea of 70 sons of God comes from in Deuteronomy 32. One of them is Bail.

Another one of them is Yom. So Bail means Lord. Yom means the C. And so L gives authority and kingship to Yom and Bail's really ticked about it because he wants to be the main guy. Kind of sounds familiar to what we've just been talking about with Satan. So Bail defeats Yom in a war. and then when he's done with it, he sets up a temple.

And the way that they write it is, something like on day one and day two, there's fire in the house. So he's starting to build it. On day three and day four, there's fire in the house. On day five and day six, there's fire in the house. On the seventh day, the temple is completed and he rests. So it's exactly what you find going on in Genesis 1 because for all the things that people fight about with Genesis 1, like the one thing that's the most important about that chapter is the one thing that never gets talked about, which is that God is making a temple, Isaiah 661, heaven is my throne, earth is my

footstool. What is the place of my rest that you will build for me? He says, that's just this one language. So God is making a temple and he is resting in it. And so what does that mean? It means he's the king. And what does that mean? It means he has dominion over everything that he makes. So when God makes Adam and even gives them dominion, he is telling them, you are now going to be my vice regent kings on this earth. And you're going to carry out the authority in my stead on this place that I just made. And you're going to essentially the idea was that you're going to bring Eden to the entire place that I made. That's what the image of God is there. And this is what made Satan so mad because he actually had the image as well.

but he was given dominion not down here but up there. So, you know, sons get dominion as the king does because they're princes. They're the royalty. That's the way this thing works. It's the way it works in all the monarchies that have ever existed on the planet because they're pictures of the original king and prince idea that comes in Genesis 1 and 2. So this is great. So human beings are created without the knowledge.

You know, I was reading the Septuagint, it said, the knowledge of everything, right? Good and evil, and then there was like, you know, you could read it more. It said, and the knowledge of everything. So I was like, huh, so we're created in God's image, but we're different. And then when we eat of the fruit, of the knowledge of good and evil and everything, then we become like a lowered, even a lowered, more like a beast, right? We become more animal-like. And that's where we're tricked, right?

Satan says, you know, God wants you to know everything. He wants you to have this knowledge. So, I mean, is his jealousy come from the fact that we were, we're almost a naive creature at that point? Like, we don't. Yeah, I think, I think we're, well, we're gullible there. So the temptation is incredibly subtle. When you go and read the story of Solomon, you'll see that when Solomon acts as a king,

he discerns good and evil. In other words, he makes right judgments from his throne. So like when the two women are fighting over the baby and says, this mine, no, it's mine. And then he says, cut it in half and give it each half to one of the women. And then the one real mother, like she says, oh, give it to her because I don't want it to die. And so then he finds out who the real mother is. What he's doing there is he's judging between good and evil. He's exactly the same thing that Adam and Eve were supposed to do.

So what's so strange about the temptation is, if you eat the, this fruit, you will know good and evil. In other words, you will make a judgment of what is right and wrong. And the strange thing is that they actually did, but they disobeyed God in doing it. And so they end up doing exactly what they weren't supposed to do. And yet they still made a judgment, which is exactly what they were supposed to do. They just made a wrong judgment because they didn't obey his law. So it's a really strange thing. And what ends up happening from that is that Satan ends up getting, you know, over the course of the next few chapters and the flood and then the Tower of Babel, authority is then given to the sons of God, the heavenly beings, who are then

set over men to preside over them almost as a punishment for what we did in the garden and then what we did at the flood and especially what we did at Tower Babel. Do you think that there is a transaction that because we're in this lower stage state of what we were because it says you will die now right you will you will surely die so we weren't supposed to die before that um then death enters the scene but are we does satan have sort of some some sort of some sort of keys to humanity at that point is there some sort of yeah yeah i think so yeah that's a great way of putting it and it's a foreshadowing of some things to talk about here a little bit later the keys of death and hell

that Jesus ends up taking away from Satan when he goes into sins during his period between when he's dead and resurrected, this idea of having keys. It seems like those keys are some kind of an authority. And so when we fall into sin and we're kicked out of the Garden of Eden, we've lost some kind of authority that we had before. That ends up getting transferred to Satan, which is kind of what he wanted in the first place. So one of the things that Satan ends up being called in Gospel of John is the ruler of this world, right? This is the word sometimes it's translated as prince of this world.

In Greek, it's the word archon. This is the same word that's translated as a prince by the Septuagint in Daniel 10 with the Prince of Persia and the Prince of Greece. they're archons. So Satan is called the prince of this world. And this is one of the things that I, kind of the last thing I wanted to talk about in terms of the past with Satan. So if we're going to look at his past as present and his future to kind of get some sort of a rough biography of who this guy is or what he's doing, we need to understand who it is that he actually is. And, you know, beyond just the words and names that tell us, well, he's our adversary or, you know, he's a serpentine kind of a creature or something like that because there's something very specific, I think,

that's going on in the temptation and when Jesus says that he saw the prince of this world be cast out. So there's a parallel that's in the synoptic gospels, which is the temptation in the wilderness. Remember this? So Jesus is taken into the wilderness and he's shown all the kingdoms of the world. And then Satan says, I will give all of these to you if you just bow down to me. And so there's a question there that needs to be asked, which is, wait a minute, I thought Jesus was God. How can Satan, first of all, have all the kingdom of the world? And how can he offer them to Jesus? I thought he was the king of kings. How can that even be a temptation? It's because Jesus left his highest state in heaven and emptied himself and became nobody on this earth to become one of us

in order to take back the dominion that we lost. But that moment and time, the authority belonged to Satan. He was the ruler of this world. Well, why? Okay, so go think about the Deuteronomy 32 worldview that you guys have talked about a lot that Dr. Heiser talked about all the time and helped us really to be able to understand. In this idea, you have these 70 sons of God over the 70 nations and they vie for power with one another. And so this is what's going on in Daniel 10 when the prince of Persia is trying to fight with the prince of Greece. Well, that's describing an actual battle that took place that we know about where Alexander, you know, or that would happen or whatever, where the Greeks are fighting the Persians. And so, you know, you learn about your world empires of history. You've got

Egypt and then you've got Babylon and then you've got Assyria and then you've got, or Assyria's first and then Babylon and then what the Medes and Persians, then the Greeks, then the Romans. So all these nations are like taking each other out and then they become the great power of the world. So here's where it gets so strange. Interesting to me. is that the Jews talked about Satan, this particular entity. And Luke, you brought up earlier, many satans, right? So you actually find that in Interestiminal Literature. There are many Satan's.

And it's one point in time there's a Satan of Satan's at any one point in time. They can be dethroned and another one can come and take its place. So the character that we call in the New Testament, Satan, they actually believed he was the prince of Rome, not the prince of Persia, not the prince of Greece, but the prince of Rome. Okay, so now that makes all the sense in the world because what empire is ruling at that point in time on the earth?

The Roman Empire. So Satan would be the prince over them, and then he then has all the kingdoms at his disposal because he's the one that has taken them all from everybody else. So he has the right to give them to Jesus, because they're his according to that inheritance of Deuteronomy 328 and the subsequent wars that he won and whatever. So if he's the prince of Rome, then you can ask yourself another question. Who is the high god of Rome? Well, for the Romans, they called him Jupiter. The Greeks called him Zeus.

So now you go to, I think this is Revelation 2 and the church at Pergamum. And it talks about how they're in the city where Satan's throne is. What in the world is I talking about? Well, it's actually talking about an archaeological discovery that's now in the Berlin Museum that I've heard recently they're going to try and return back to Turkey that's called the throne of Zeus. It's this giant throne that was in the city of Pergammon. John calls it Satan, but it's actually the throne of Zeus is what they called it, because Satan is the prince of Rome, the prince of Rome, the prince of Rome.

Prince of Rome is Jupiter, the Prince of Rome is Zeus, because Satan is Zeus. They're the same entity. Now, Zeus is a sky god and a storm god. When you go to the Old Testament, there's one and only one character that fits that bill. His name is Bale. He's the storm god. We talked about him a little bit earlier, this god who fought Yom, the sea god. Well, Bail means Lord, but he was actually the storm god because bail and zeus and satan are the same entity so when you start to put all that those kind of clues together and all of a sudden it makes a lot more sense of why it is that the new testament is so focused on this character satan and why it is that bail is so prominent in the old testament but not in the new testament it's because he just kind of he changed aspects or he was

taken over by the greeks and the romans or however you want to put it because the Old Testament's dealing with ancient near Eastern culture. New Testament's moved now into the Greek Greco-Roman culture, but it's the same entity. Let me ask them for my small brain. We're talking about many Satan's, and you have these, with the Deuteronomy 32 and these Elohim over the nations, and you have the rise of these empires as you drew them out, and each conquers the next, and so we get to Rome at the time that John's writing,

and Rome is the world, right? is is when we talk about many satans are we talking about the same entity then overseeing these empires as they rise and then overtake or are we talking about different entities i think it's different entities so i do not think that the prince of persia is the prince of rome i think they're different guys like archons they're they're archons yeah absolutely they're the princess and how does that how does that connect us then to the garden and the serpent so for whatever reason however that works and i don't know that i i have a great answer for this but Because John associates this particular character we call Satan with the person who's in the

Garden of Eden, the Prince of Rome happened to be the one who was in the Garden of Eden. It could have been all kinds of different creatures, but that's, so when you go, again, you know, you go and read the Jews, what they talked about it. They have different names for him, and sometimes they would be different creatures. So there's some speculation going on to some degree in terms of who this person is. But taking John at his word and believing that he's inspired, I take the view that the person that we call Satan is the same character that's in the Garden of Eden. And so then, because we know these different Elohim that fell and those that are judged in Psalm 82 as well, along with the watchers, of course, that are in Tartars. They are battling each other as well, right?

They are fighting in fighting for dominion. We talk about, you said Greece and Persian, maybe think of 300, like one of my favorite movies, right? the hot cakes and Leonidas, right, the 300 Spartans, this is Sparta. Because I think we have the singularity idea a lot of times. There's this one thing, right? It's the binary view of the supernatural. There's just one thing. There's one bad guy and a bunch of demons. But this is different. I mean, this is a bunch of entities. We talked to Dr. Joel Matamale in our episode about territorial spirits. These are these Elohim that are given the nations. And the serpent happens to be one of those. Is that, am I correct in that? And then,

at the time of John, the same serpent or entity that we call Satan that was in the garden is also that ruling Elohim over the empire of Rome. Yeah, the one who was given Rome later. I guess you could sit at some point in time. Okay. Yeah. So another way to think about this is to think about your Greek mythology, even if you hated it, you still know a little bit about it.

So because I said Satan is Zeus, think about the story of Zeus. who is Zeus besides being the high god of of Rome and Greece so he's the king of Olympus right he rules with the 12 but he's the he's the high god of the 12 but how did he get that job so he overthrew his father chronos chronos and Zeus are totally different creatures so who who in the world is chronos and this is where some of the work that Derek Gilbert has done is just really really excellent and helpful for figuring out who chronos is he believes that is Saturn. He also believes that Saturn is another word for him as Molek, and another word for him is L. So, L is a word that is used in the Old Testament many, many times, and it describes

our high God. The word means the most high. So when you see the translation, Most High, or, sorry, Almighty, then that's probably the word L in the Hebrew. However, the Canaanites had a God, name L, and he was the high god of the Pantheon. He was the father god with Asherah who had the 70 sons. So Zeus would have been one of the 70 sons, like Bail, because they're the same creature. L is the father. And in the story, Bail essentially takes out Yom and becomes the high god, not the high god, but he essentially usurps L's position. I don't think that we have any literature that tells us that he killed L. But Zeus didn't kill Kronos either. Zeus took Kronos and he locked him up in a prison into Taurus, which is the same idea that you get in Second Peter when the watchers

are locked up into Tardis before the flood. In fact, that whole story happens during the time in the flood. And that's how Zeus ends up ascending to be the high god of the Greek and Roman pantheon. So they're not the same entity, and that's the reason why I brought that up is, you're right. We hear Satan. We just think everything is Satan, and that's not true. It's all kinds of entities they're fighting out there that are, you know, sometimes they're working with each other, sometimes they're fighting against each other. It's not all completely hostile. It's not like they all want to take each other out.

It's just like, you know, it's like down here. I think it's probably very, very similar to the way the kingdoms of the world work down here. there was so many questions especially you know a lot of people ask us a lot of theological stuff and then we get in you know we haven't really gotten into the ideas of the Trinity yet I can be show 200 yeah

yeah right dude seriously that and the transfiguration there you go the transfiguration but the way I see it you know there are you know like Heiser and I think we talked a little bit about it but you know Jesus being the son of God right but Satan is in created order Jesus is outside of creative order.

If you view it as him being the pure genetic stock of God, the only son of God, the begotten, son of God. Satan is a created being under creation, right? Even though he's not created on earth, he is a created being, maybe a higher created being. So if you think about this as a list of hierarchy, every, you know, there's no one like God. Satan is, is he a mortal creature? Is he going to die?

Naturally going to die or is he condemned to die? He's condemned to die. Yeah. So I think that they had contingent, contingent immortality just like us. And we brought that up earlier with Adam and Eve. They had contality. If they would have done what they were supposed to do, they would have lived forever and eaten of the tree of life. But they didn't.

Same thing with the fallen. angels, any angel. It's contingent immortality. And this is maybe two of driving out when it says, you're going to die like any man. Well, it doesn't make any sense for a man to die like any man. So it's got to be talked about the heavenly like a man. So they've been condemned to die for what they've done. Yeah, I read that last night. Like they had they couldn't, they couldn't eat of the tree because then they'd be permanently altered. You know, they had to be banished from the garden because they they they then need to be redeemed because they're they're altered creature exactly right that's interesting because you know a lot of people just read this story as just a weird metaphor right they

don't they don't see these trees and these beings as real things it's just fascinating that we could we could live forever if we eat this this tree so so before that happens i guess my point is like is satan's temptation original temptation is it to give us knowledge or is it to to alter our state? What do you think he really is trying to do there? I think he's trying to get us to abdicate our authority, our dominion, which is exactly what he ended up getting because we were kicked out of the Garden of Eden. So I don't think that the knowledge thing, I mean, the knowledge thing,

that's a whole another bunny trail. I mean, you go down the whole Gnostic and secret knowledge stuff. There's all kinds of interesting places you could go there. But I don't think that that's the chief thing that he's trying to do. He hates the fact that we've been given dominion. He wants dominion. And so he found a way to get it. Yeah, because we, and this seems like all these cryptic creatures and all these encounters,

it's always permission, asking permission. There has to be some sort of, you know, it's a request. So, you know, you had us read these verses in Revelation. We're just, we're just catching up in the past, though, nay. We can't get to the future yet. Okay. That's the trick question, Luke. That's the trick question, is that one of the reasons I wanted to do this is because I want to,

I want to present a view of Revelation that I don't think a lot of people have ever heard about. So I wanted to talk about the past of Satan a little bit, who he is, what he's done is fall, you know, especially the Prince of Rome idea, because I think it's important for understanding his present condition and then also the future. So when we hear the book of Revelation, and that's where we've just been talking about, I think almost all Christians immediately go to the idea of our future before anything else. And I don't know that that's necessarily what we should be doing. This is going to take a minute to kind of unpack this. It's really, it's kind of complicated. I'll do my best to kind of give an overview of it. So there's a couple different ways to approach this that we need to think about it with Revelation. And the first thing I want to say is that of all the things I'm going to say here, I'm not dogmatic on really any of them. I've taught Revelation three or four times in our church. And every time I teach it, the more I say to myself, I have no idea what this book is about.

It's like it's not going the other direction. That's the direction it goes with me. This is an incredibly complicated and an amazing book. And I've thought a lot recently about the first coming and how Paul says if they would have actually known, they would never would have put him to death. They never would have crucified the Lord of Glory. I often wonder if maybe the second coming isn't going to be very, very similar, that we think we know a lot and we have everything we need to know, but maybe we're not going to be allowed to see exactly the way it's going to unfold

for some similar reasons to the first coming. So that said, in other words, I'm not trying to be dogmatic about this. And I don't want to destroy anybody's bubble or say that this is the way you have to read a revelation. But what I want to say is that when people come to the, the book of Revelation, especially evangelical Christians, we've pretty much been taught kind of one thing. And then it has three versions and which one are you? So the question is usually around the millennium and the tribulation. And people say, well, when do you think Jesus is going to come back?

It's going to be before the tribulation or in the middle of the tribulation or after the tribulation. So kind of the pre-trib, post-trib, mid-trib, and then, you know, the joke is always, well, I don't know, it all pan out, so I'm pan-trib, right? Those are actually only three views. views within one category of how people have read Revelation in terms of the question of the millennium. And that's called premillennialism. Pre-millennialism is just the idea that Jesus is going to return before the millennium. And so then when he returns, he will usher in the millennium, and there's going to be bliss for a thousand years or whatever. But there's another view out there, which is called post-millennialism, that I really never even heard of growing up. It wasn't until I went to

Christian college and took a theology class. I was like, well, how come I've never heard of this? Post-millanialism's different. It essentially says Jesus is going to return after the millennium instead of before it. And for all these views, there's been Christians that have held different, you know, these different views. Like, the church has never really agreed on this, which is one of the reasons why I think it's maybe, maybe it's kind of hidden from us.

I don't know. But post-millennialism has kind of two iterations of it. One is kind of classic post-millanialism. And I like to joke that kind of classic premillennialism is things are just getting worse and worse and worse until Jesus comes back. And so premillennialism gets really popular when in your own culture, things get worse and worse and worse. So like probably the last three years, people have become more pre-millennial. But post-millianism is kind of this rosy idea that, well, things are just going to gradually get better and better and better. and we're just going to find ourselves in the millennium, and then Jesus will return after that.

And that often has a lot to do with kind of how things are going in your culture, too. So like you're living through the roaring 20s or whatever, and post-millennialism is really popular. You go through the Depression, all of a sudden, pre-millanism gets really popular, you know? There's a third view, which is called omelennialism, which I hate that word, because it was really given to those who hold it by people who don't hold it. And in the words, it's kind of a term of derision. A millennialism is literally without millennium. So like atheism is without God. So an atheist is somebody who doesn't believe in God.

So an A millennialist would literally be somebody who doesn't believe in a millennium. But that's completely not what it is. Instead, what they believe is that the millennium is right now. We're in the millennium. So as soon as people hear that, they go, that's absolutely absurd. How could anybody possibly believe that we're in the millennium? So you have all these questions that start coming up about, well, what is the millennium? What is the binding of Satan?

Because it's tied up with the millennial question, which is why I wanted to do guys read Revelation 21 through 10, because that's what that's all about. So in order to kind of wrap your head around what I'm going to say, I want to spend just a minute talking about the book of Revelation as a piece of literature. Choice Hotels gets you more of what you value. Comfort in, it's calling your name, save on the stay. Oh, and free waffles are yours to claim. Book direct at sourceotails.com. So when people read the book of Revelation, the most popular way these days of reading the book is linearly, chronologically, just chapter after chapter.

So in other words, what happens in chapter six happens right after chapter five. What happens in chapter 7 happens after chapter 6, and it goes all the way through to the end of the book. So when you come to chapter 19 and you see this great battle at the end of chapter 19, and then you come to chapter 20. If you're reading the book linearly, then you're going to say, okay, chapter 20 happens after chapter 19. Chapter 19 is this great battle, so chapter 20 has to be when the binding of Satan is. And this is one of the reasons why when you say that the millenniums now, people go, that's not possible. The thing is there's a totally different way of reading the book of Revelation,

which is in cycles that repeat each other. So the basic idea there is that the book is written in a series of seven cycles, according to the chapters 1 through 3 would be one cycle, four through seven would be the next cycle, 8 through 11 is the next cycle, and on and on until you get to the end of the book. And when you read it that way, what you find out is that there's at least four of these cycles that end in a war. Okay? And this war, at each one of them, has very, very similar language. So you find the nations being trodden under by the wine press of God in his wrath and his fury, for example. Well, that language is repeated at the end of every single one of these battles. So that when you're reading the book as a series of cycles, you can read it as

they're actually telling the same battle but from different perspectives. So I liken it to around a staircase, you know, that goes around in a circle, but it gets higher and higher. So that when you go up to the step that's right above your head, you're still in the same vertical axis, but you've got a different perspective because you're looking at something that's maybe 10 feet higher than where you just were. So it's not that the cycles are telling you exactly the same thing, but generally speaking, they're taking you from the first coming to the second coming, and then they start over again, from the first coming to the second coming. And probably the best way to illustrate that is to go to chapter 12, which is dead center of the

book, and this is the story of essentially the birth of Jesus, and then the binding or the casting down of Satan by Michael, the archangel, when the third of the stars fall. Well, why is that in the middle of the book? If that's talking about the first coming and I'm supposed to read it linearly. Well, I would argue it's in the beginning of the book because it starts a new cycle. And the new cycle starts with the birth of Jesus. And then it talks about the binding of Satan. And then it talks about his church and what's going to happen to the church until that cycle ends.

And then the cycle will start over again. Okay. So that's one thing that people are not aware of with reading Revelation hardly at all. Second thing, to me, is even more interesting, which is the book of Revelation is actually itself, it's a chiasm. And people go, what the heck is a chiasm? So, you know, the Pink Floyd song, where the end of the song, they go, if you don't eat your meat, you can't have any pudding. And if you can't have any pudding, if you don't eat your meat, right? When Jesus says, the first will be last and the last will be first, that's a chiasm. You have an A, B, B, A.

You've got a repetition. The first, the last, that's A and B, and then last will be first, the B and the A. So they're working on each other in a literary way. Okay. So the crazy thing is the book of Revelation is a giant kiasm from the beginning to end. There's over 50 of these that match up exactly from chapter one to the end of the book. And centering at the dead center of Revelation is the place where Michael, takes out the dragon. Where this gets really weird is that Revelation was written by the Apostle John.

And John didn't just write Revelation. He also wrote the book of John. And he wrote the three letters of John as well. So same guy. Book of John is an exact parallel to the book of Revelation in terms of the kinds of stories that it has, the language that it's using in chapter one. So the book of John begins with the word of God, in the beginning was the word, where's with God, word was God. Revelation begins exact same way. It talks about how he saw the word of God. And you get these literary word clues that are exactly the same, chapter one to chapter one, chapter two, chapter two, chapter two, chapter three, all the way to the end of the book. And even more crazy, it goes backwards. So that the things that are at the end of chapter 21 and John match up with the first part of

Revelation in chapter one all the way to the end so that the parts that are at the very beginning of John chapter one match up with the things are at the very end of Revelation 22. It's completely, I mean, like the only way this could happen in my mind is if God wrote the thing. It's just too mind-boggling for me to put my mind around. But what's so really weird about this is that this gives us a center for the book of John, which is the exact same thing as the center of the book. of Revelation. So listen to these two things. John chapter 12. They're both in chapter 12. A voice came out of heaven. People heard. They said it thundered. Others said an angel spoke. And then Jesus says,

now the ruler of this world, Satan will be cast out. The prince of the world will be cast out. Here's the center of revelation. Satan who deceives the whole world was cast to the earth and his angels and I heard a loud voice in heaven. And there were many thunderings. And you've got the exact same parallels going on. So the center of Revelation and John are the casting out of Satan, the binding of Satan. Chapter 12 of Revelation is a parallel to chapter 20 of Revelation. Use the same kind of language of binding. Okay. So take that and you go, all right, my mind is reeling already. I don't even know what to do with this. But here's the thing. John's gospel is telling us the story of Jesus' life on earth, right? From his beginning of his ministry, essentially to his death and resurrection.

If the parallels are meant to be read together, this means that revelation is taking us on the exact same journey, but instead of with Christ, it's taking it with his church from the first coming to the second coming. Okay? So now, what does that mean in terms of Satan and his binding? So we need to go to Revelation 20 to kind of look at that and see what in the world is this thing saying. And so it says I saw an angel coming down from heaven holding in his hand the keys to the bottomless pit and a great chain. And he sees the dragon, the ancient serpent, who's the devil and Satan. And he bound him for a thousand years and he threw him into the pit, shut it and sealed it over him so that he might not deceive the nations any longer until the thousand years were ended after that. he must be released for a little while. Okay, so just take this apart piece by piece. You have Satan,

first of all, you have an angel coming down from heaven. Who is this? Well, in the John Parall, it's Jesus. Jesus says, I am the one who came down from heaven. So Jesus is being likened there to the angel of the Lord. Then it says he holds in the hand the keys to the bottomless pit. What's that? We talked about it earlier, the keys of heaven or the keys of hell and death that he won when when he died he descended to hell he pillaged hell he took the keys of hell of death and hell and he was raised to life and he has now the keys to life and he offers us the tree of life it says that he holds the key to what the bottomless pit what's the bottomless pit it's the word abyss remember i brought up l and uh Saturn a minute ago. So the home of L in the Bale cycle is the abyss. This is his home. He dwells in the

two deeps. And this was believed to be actually in the Sea of Galilee. He actually was said to have, that was the entrance to his home, Sea of Galilee in the abyss, which would then take him to the underworld. So Saturn is the God of the underworld. So Jesus essentially binding Satan and he's putting him in the abyss. Why does that matter? This is actually where he's from. The watchers were called Apkalu in the Babylonian stories. Essentially the same thing. Apkalu basically means big watermen. Big watermen. Why? Because that's where they were from. They were said to reside in the abyss, in the Apseu. So Jesus takes these keys to the bottom of spit this abyss, and he has a great chain. what's the chain and then it says he binds Satan what does it mean he binds it what does that mean does

it mean he has like this iron chain and that Satan has hands and Jesus takes it and locks him up and no because Satan's a spiritual being so if you go and read other places that talk about the binding of heavenly beings like Job Job talks about binding the Pleiades and the Orion what does that mean binding the what what could that possibly mean that Orion is is a bunch of stars in the sky, right? Palaides are seven sisters. Do you bind them? What does that mean?

Jeremiah talks about binding the waves of the sea with an oath. What does that mean? It means that they've been put under a covenant by God and they're not allowed to do certain things. In the case of the sea, they're not allowed to transgress the boundary of the beach, basically, right? If they did, there would be total chaos. The only time that happens is during the Great Flood.

That's when the bindings let loose because God says, no, it's time for punishment. Other than that, these things we call laws of nature, they hold these things in check. Essentially, then I think that that's what's going on with the binding of Satan. He's being sent to the bottomless pit, and he's not going to be allowed to do anything to usurp the authority of Christ. Now, here's the key. If people have not listened to anything else that are totally lost, this is the one thing that I think will really help people. what is he bound from doing he's bound so that he might not deceive the nations any longer you see that that's the only thing that it says he's prevented from doing it doesn't say he's it doesn't

say he's completely bound so that he can't he can't run around anymore he's not a you know roaring lion like peter says singing whom he may devour he's all those things but he cannot deceive the nations any longer. This is exactly what Jesus says in the book of John. The Prince of the Nations is, he's being cast out so that he will not deceive the nations anymore. Okay. Now, the reason why I thought that this would be good for your audience, guys, is because they're familiar enough with the Divine Council worldview to be able to understand this. In the Old Testament, when the nations are given over to the 70 sons of God, they are then led into darkness, and they are not given the light of Christ. That's what Psalm 82 is all about.

They're judged because they refuse to give worship to Yahweh, and they took the worship for themselves. That's why all the nations are worshipping their gods. They weren't supposed to do that. That wasn't what the whole point was. But that's what they did, and so forth they're going to die like any man. So in order to become a believer in the Old Testament, you had to come to the one place where Yahweh's light was shining, which was to Israel into his country, his people.

You had to become a Jew. You had to be circumcised. You had to enter into the covenant. The whole deal. That's what the stories like Ruth are all about. Because they're showing that this is how you get saved. Starting at Pentecost, now this is after the descent, after he dies. So he dies for our sin. after he has then gone down to hell and he pillages hell, he takes the keys of death and Hades, and he rises from the dead. That's not the end of it, because then he ascends to heaven, where he's now seated at the right hand of the Father, above all powers and authorities in heaven and on earth. They have no authority over him anymore.

That's what he says at the Great Commission. All authority has been given to me, so therefore go and make disciples of all the nations. and so that's exactly what they do, starting at Pentecost. And then how does that work its way out? Throughout the Book of Acts, they start with the nations coming to Jerusalem, and all the nations here, Peter, talking in their own language. It's a reversal of Babel, where at Babel, the one tongue becomes many tongues. Here it is, the one tongue becomes heard in many tongues,

and it's the tongue of the gospel. And so then they go back and they take the gospel to their nations. and then the rest of the book of Acts unfolds and what happens? All of a sudden, all these Gentiles start getting saved. What does that mean? It means Satan's no longer deceiving the nations. What does that mean according to Revelation 20? It means he's not deceiving the nations anymore.

And what does that mean? It means he has to be bound right now because that's the whole point of the binding. You see? So what I'm saying is in terms of the present activity of Satan, I believe Satan is very active and alive and well. However, he does not have the power to bind people in darkness if the gospel comes to them and they turn to Christ and believe. He had that power before. He does not have that power anymore.

And that's what the entire church age has been about. This is why I believe he's, this is why I believe in the present binding of Satan. That's why I believe the millennium is now because this is the millennial passage. The millennium, in my estimation, is the fact that Satan is bound and he's not deceiving the nations. It has nothing to do with whether or not we're going to have a golden age or it's going to be hell on earth before he comes back. Those things happen throughout church history. But Satan is not deceiving the nation. Now, sure, he deceives lots and lots of people.

But if the gospel comes in somebody believes, he has no authority to stop that. See what I'm saying? There's a totally different way of reading the book of Revelation than I have said it says he's going to get it says he's going to get out for a short time though. And that takes you to the future part of this. That takes you to the future part of this. Let me just do some math though. This is where I metaphorical speaking, because if it was from Pentecost to now, we're more than a thousand years. Right.

Sure. So it's funny because, you know, in a thousand AD there was this huge like turmoil in the church. Everybody thought Jesus was coming back because of a thousand years. Here we are. Yeah. Yeah, almost every single number in the book of Revelation is symbolic number. 144,000 is a symbolic number 12 times, what is it, a thousand? Unless you're 10,000 or whatever.

Then you believe it. And you want to be more than 140. Yeah, unless you're Joe's. Exactly. That's right. So this is a book of symbolism. It's a book of mysterious images. You know, we talked about some of that with the whole Star's idea in that episode we did last year.

I love that episode, by the way. Not to be taken literalistically, but to be taken in the spirit in which they're given. So what is a number of thousands symbolized? A long period of time that's perfect according to what God has in store.

So then he gets set free. Then he gets set free, and now you're into the future. So the thing I like about this view is that it's actually capable of kind of holding all the views at the same time. So some guys will believe that most of Revelation is dealing with Revelation, with, sorry, 70 AD. So they believe they're called Preterus. And Preterus takes the

book of Revelation and says, well, look, almost everything, if not everything, was fulfilled in 70A.D. And the thing about it is, when you go and read Josephus and you compare the things Jesus says in the sermon on a mount, a lot of things in Revelation, you're like, wow, that's exactly what happened. The thing is, there's another view called the historicist view, which kind of sees Revelation is taking place in stages throughout church history. And then you have a futurist view, which says, no, the whole book of Revelation is only about our own future. It's not about anything past. It's only about our own future, which is what most, I think most people kind of read the book as. The view I'm giving you actually can contain all of those things, because

it sees history as being repeated. Cycle. Cyclical. And then the other thing to say about that is that actually every one of these views, unless you're a hyper preterist that believes Jesus is, you know, we're already resurrected, which is really a heresy. Preterism isn't a hard. That's a tough one.

That's a tough one. Yeah. I mean, that's just, that's craziness. Nobody in the church has ever taken that view. But other than that view right there, everybody else has the ability, to say that, yeah, you know what? After the millennium, there's going to be some kind of terrible thing that happens kind of before the very end of it all. So whether you call that the tribulation because you're premillennial or whether you call that, you know, the loosing of Satan here at the end, he must be released for a little while to go against the Saints, camp of the Saints. It effectively kind of all ends up looking the same. And so I believe that, well, actually, I actually don't know if he hasn't been loosed right now. I think that.

it's possible that he has. I don't look at the loosing of Satan as something that necessarily happens in a second, you know, like, okay, well, he's let out of jail, so now he's free to do whatever he wants. I'm also looking at it as like stages or over the course of a long period of time, you know, maybe 100 years, 150 years, some really weird things have been going on in this world in the supernatural realm to kind of open doors and portals to entities that had not been done to the to the degree of been done in the last 150 years. And we're kind of living at the moment, the precipice where we're seeing like an unleashing of evil that I don't know if it has a precedent in history or not. I just really don't know the answer to that. So it could be

possible that we're seeing this kind of release of the devil right now. But at the same time, it's also possible that this is just another one of the cycles and that I don't really know what I'm talking about. I think some of the harder parts when I think about some of these things, because there's a lot of people who, they have their nose in theology world, right? Which is great. We need people like you and Heiser and guys like that are just studying theology and the weird theology and trying to make answers to it. But then there's a lot of other guys, Doug, in our spaces who are trying to bring a light to the abduction hybrids. Right, right.

This army that's being created under our noses. And there's only so many Christians who are willing to, like, hey, you know, we can argue all day long about theology, but people's pregnancies are going missing and other weird stuff. And that's kind of where our shows kind of come in to try to fill some of those gaps. It's like, that's where I have a hard time thinking it's just a cycle because it's, it seems like it's merging with technology in a way that all the forms of technology, like the ancient technology and then modern technology. It's sort of coming to a place where all of mankind can be enslaved again within five years. I totally hear what you're saying, Nate. I mean, when I think about something like transhumanism, for example, I look at that and I go, like, there's no coming back from this. Or when I look at artificial intelligence and what they're actually trying to do, whether or not they can do it or not, that's an important question.

But, you know, whether what we're seeing with these AIs that are coming online and people are interacting with them is actually artificial intelligence or not, I don't know the answer to that. But I know what they're trying to do. And if we actually are able to do that, like that's completely unprecedented in history. And so one of the things, kind of two practical things about this. The first one is that my view, the more millennial view, is something that a lot of the guys who hold to my view, they don't want to talk about the stuff that we're talking about on this show. Exactly. So this stuff that you brought up. And that really bothers me because in this worldview, in this theological view of all millennialism, they actually have the category for the releasing of Satan.

And it's like they don't want to talk about it. It's almost like it can never happen. And no, it can happen and it will happen. And there has to be things that we can be looking for to see that. The other side of that, though, is that for the people that are like, they're completely consumed by kind of a, you know, the end is coming right now. And I know what that's like because I've lived there. I've been in that space for a long time in my life is that the idea that Satan is bound.

And even when you keep reading, you know, I had you guys read through chapter 10. and you see that Satan is going out to deceive the nations. So he's going after mankind, but he's also gathering up to surround the camp of the saints, which means that there's still Christians that are there. Okay. And so that means that the binding still is able somehow to, he still can't completely take out, you know, keep people from trusting in Christ, even at the very, very end of it. There's still believers that are there.

The point is that there's another side of this, which is that people that are living in terrible fear of Satan and are consumed with like, Jesus has got to come back, Jesus got to come back, and they can't think of anything else. They really need to see that there's hope. And the hope is that Satan's binding allows people to continue to be saved. It means that the gospel is powerful,

does exactly what God wants it to do. It saves his people. It frees them and releases them from his power that we were talking about earlier, you know, that unbelievers, they can't understand that. And they're afraid of even saying the names of some of these entities. Christians don't need to have that kind of a fear. Even when he's released to march up against them, what's going to happen? Like, it's funny because that passage makes it sound like as soon as he marches out,

instantly fire comes down from heaven and consumes them. It's like Sodom and Gomorrah. It's like just there's not even a fight. And then the devil is thrown into the lake of fire, so now not the abyss, but now actually his eternal judgment and sulfur, where the beast and the false prophet were, and now he's tormented day and night forever and ever. And then, you know, then we live in, however, the eternal bliss part of that. So, you know, it's like. If we are to read it in cycles, like you would say, at some point you come to the last cycle, right? I mean, this is part of the thing.

There is a last cycle. It's not like this is infinitely repeating. I think it's fascinating. Revelation itself is fascinating and understands adversary is fascinating because, you know, since the, since John, you know, and you talk about 70 AD, since this, people have thought that they were in the end times, right? And here we are. Here we are again. And I think it's very easy to think like we're at the end. And this is the last cycle. And I do think there's a lot of prophecy things. And this is not, this is not where the show is necessarily, this is another rabbit trail. But like, I do know that it will wind down and we will be in the last cycle. And when Satan is freed, then this will, it will set off this, this change. of events that culminates in the second coming of Christ and a vanquishing of our adversary, of the enemy of our souls. And I just, I think it's interesting, this conversation about technology and the convergence of all things that are happening, the meshing of technology and humanity and transhumanism

and AI stuff that's just popping up everywhere now. I have trouble with some of the things that I, it feels like we are devolving to the end. and then I remind myself that, you know, 99 reasons that Jesus comes back in 99, right? Exactly. And I don't know where that is. And I know that I think you made an interesting point during the show that maybe it's, it doesn't happen the way necessarily that we think it does in the same way that Jesus showed up as a man and was, you know, emptied himself, right?

And he was this son of a carpenter for 33 years before he really came onto the scene and the world was asleep. And I think that the end is going to look different because we have a lot of literature. and we have revelation. I know everyone interpret it. It looks differently, but it also says that we'll know another time or the day. I think the idea of binding,

I think somewhere I want to just ruminate and dwell a little bit, the idea that you're right. When the gospel was released the day of Pentecost, it grafted in the rest, all are welcome in God's family. It changed history. I mean, it literally changed history. It changed everything.

It changed absolutely everything. And is there any difference between a cycle and an age or the same thing? Well, the age question is fascinating to me. I brought this up on a show a couple years ago, so most people won't have it fresh in their mind. I think that we have reason to believe that an age talking eschatologically could be talking about the great year, which is the 26,200-year cycle. Procession of the equinoxes. And so the age that Jesus came in would be is actually the 12th month of that cycle. the age of Pisces. And this is why they actually called Christians fishes. And Jesus said,

I'll make you fishers of men. Their baptismal ponds were called fish ponds. The sign that they would greet each other with was the fish, even the Icthus, the whole idea of the Ictheus. You're still seen it on the back of a bumper stickers on cars, right? It's an acronym for Jesus being God and Savior. But it's a fish. Well, why? Because that was the age of Pisces. But the thing is, you guys have talked about, this was numerous guests on your show. The age of Pisces is coming to an end if it hasn't already ended. And we're entering into the new age, which is the age of Aquarius as the song sings. And that new age, I don't believe that, you know, if this is a biblical idea, and there's church fathers that believe that it could have been,

I don't believe that the age of Aquarius is going to look like what the new agers believe it will look like because Jesus is the God man that has the water of life, which is what Aquarius is. So it could be something absolutely glorious. But we're in a transitionary period. That transitionary period in the great year takes a long time to get into. One degree of movement is 72 years on earth. So it takes a long time for that thing to move out of one age and into the next. But if that's the case, we're right at, you know, it's just another kind of one of those things that I look at.

And I go, well, we are actually changing ages, according to the great year, right in the middle of a massive transition. And so it could very well be that the end of the age that Jesus talks about is talking about the moment we're in right now. Wow. And I like it, Doug, because whatever stance you take on Revelation, I think when you do a paranormal podcast, it's really hard to land anywhere because the dark stuff you hear and the weird stuff just keeps coming. But eventually, you know, there's a time when the wheat and the tears are together, right? But eventually they're not. You know, eventually the tears get burned up. It's not just perpetual.

But it says, there is a time when these are going to grow together to strengthen. I think in some ways the evil stuff, it sort of puts hair on your chest. It grows you up. You understand the story so much more and you understand your need of a savior so much more. But it reminds me you, you were talking about John. And one of the things that stuck to me when I was a kid, was when Jesus calls out the Pharisees and says, you are of your father, the devil.

I remember reading that and go, and he says it straight to him. He was a murderer from the beginning. But that's John 8, right? Chapter 8. Satan's just from the beginning, huh? You know, it's funny. So you call your show blurry creatures.

You've had that since the very beginning. That's what the show is, blurry creatures. But I think the goal is to shed light on the blurry so that the light can help expose what they are a little bit better so that you can actually have not a blurry understanding of them but a clearer understanding of them right kind of an ironic thing yeah so it seems to me that the same idea should be in our mind when we come to satan um i i really do think there's a lot of blurry that's going on with him from who he is to what he

presently is and is not able to do to in the future what he will do to humanity and what what he wants to do to the church what he has always wanted to do to us be he hates our guts and if we're not thinking clearly about this blurry creature called satan then it it's just not a good thing but if we can think more clearly about it um come to some better biblical conclusions at least think through some things that maybe we haven't thought through before. I think that it can go a long way to helping us in a lot of difference. Yeah. It's funny because I think we do

talk a lot about trying to give clarity to the weird stuff, whether it's cryptids, creatures. And one of these thoughts I had is that what I think is happening now seems to have been a cycle that's happened a lot. The Golden Age, into the Golden Age, what you had is you had sort of concentrated evil, and it got

so concentrated, and then it was flooded out, and it was diluted again. And then it got concentrated again at the Tower Babel. And then it was diluted out again. And now technology is concentrating the evil again. So it feels like a cycle. And I think that's why on our show we say, what is happening? What is all this evil and this crazy stuff behind the scenes?

It seems like transhumanism and technology is going to concentrate that evil again to really dominate humanity. sort of a way that they've done it in the past. You know, like, if you think about the Tower of Babbel, it's like we've got to confuse the languages, put them out all over the place. But it seems like we're getting there again. Like, we're all speaking the same language now, right? I mean, isn't it crazy?

They call our translation things Babel. Like, okay, go to Babel, and then you can get an instant translation into any language. It's unbelievable where we're at. But, you know, you see all these signs of technology, He's uniting humanity and they can just say, be outraged at this thing. And then mobs of people are outraged.

Yep. It's a pseudo golden age, which is probably honestly what the original golden age was, too. Oh, yeah. It was like all of humanity was able to concentrate this sort of this rebellious spirit. And then they all came together. And eventually it just got out of hand because it's too much. And it seems like we're right at the beginning of that again. Or maybe we're farther through the into the middle game or even the end game.

I don't know. Yeah. And then I guess maybe my last question is when Jesus, I come, I'm bringing a sword. You know, I return, you know, I think it's controversial to some people. When Jesus comes back, is that sword for Satan? Well, when he says, yeah, when he says that I come to bring a sword to divide mother against father, I mean, what he's doing is he's bringing his kingdom to this earth. So take the idea of the Pharisees being sons of the devil, which is what he says.

So the kingdoms of this earth are not the kingdom of God. They're just not. The confusion of America with the kingdom of God is it's everywhere in our culture, in our churches. We have the American flag right next to the Christian flag in all our churches. I mean, it's crazy. Jesus' kingdom is a totally different kingdom. He is the alone king of it. there are no rivals to him.

And when he brings this kingdom, it creates division between people. It can't help but do that. He's the prince of peace, but he's also the judge of heaven and earth, and he won't let the evil go on forever. And I think that, you know, that's a lot of what's behind that image.

And it makes me think, Doug, do you think that in this creation story, if you think about Lord of the Rings, right, humans there's all these characters sons of god archons powers thrones and humans are almost like these hobbits right where we are a character and we do play a part in this story that's coming do you think human beings are going to be

part of something that destroys this evil once and for all yeah that's the great hope it's the reversal it's actually the bringing back of the divine counsel it was originally meant to be but but even even better better for us so go back to the garden and that whole scene there is the divine council scene it's a it's a heavenly mountain you have a heavenly being on it you have god on it you have the trees of eden the stones of fire which i think are the other Elohim and then you have the man who has put on it well what's he doing here he isn't have a right to be here again that why did Satan fall what's he doing here well god gave adam a seat on that on that council

and we abdicated our seat on a council, but it was still given to mankind. We have that seat by birthright, as Timothy Alborino says, and title was book, right? And so the point of this reversal in Acts and what Jesus is doing is he's restoring us to that position of sons of God. That's not accidental language. And that's princely, kingly language that we're, because we're being brought into the kingdom of the king. So we're princes, brothers with him. And so what does that mean? Paul kind of puts it to the Corinthians when he says,

don't you know that you will judge the angels? What is that supposed to mean? Well, it's the reversal of what they've done to us. But it's done now through the Prince of Peace, who has won that seat as a man, given us the authority as his adopted brothers and sisters, to be able to carry out dominion the way we're supposed to, which will include having dominion and judgment of those guys.

So you think Satan is somewhere right now, but he's locked up? Well, it's like a house arrest, right? Remember, you know, your Al Capone, he's arrested, but he still ran his entire mafia from prison. Yeah, from prison. That's exactly what I think is going on with Satan. He's locked up, how, whatever that means for a spiritual being. I really don't have any idea.

but, you know, he's not able to deceive the nations, but I think that you can have these two things simultaneously. I think you can have Peter saying that Satan is prowling around like a roaring lion seeking whom he made a vour at the same time that he is bound from deceiving the nations, according to Revelation 20. Yeah, that makes more sense to me because a lot of people say they've had strange encounters with some say Satan himself. Man, Doug, it's heavy. I think it's good.

It's a good conversation because a lot of people don't. You know, we like to talk about nice, fluffy things most of the time at church. And we don't really like to get into the crazier, darker stuff. And we don't celebrate that. But I think it's very good to have context of where this stuff comes from. Because we hear it all the time. And every time someone has an encounter with some, you know, lower entity, it's not fun. You know, there's very, very few cryptic encounters or creatures.

encounters that are that are pleasant and so where does all this stuff come from and why is it here and who gives it authority to be here and why is it located in certain areas and seem to have authority in certain places and not in others and who's giving it you know how well how does that work because people have been terrified and tormented by some of this stuff for a long time and they have no answers so some people ask like why you talk about that stuff all the time on your podcast well that's why that's exactly why we talk about it plus yeah i mean and Nate i would say like one of the things i say on the show a lot is I go back to like Sun Tzu, right? This is art of war, most famous generals of all time. And one of the things he said is if you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not

fear the result of a hundred battles. And I think part of the thing is a reminder that we are in a world of war. And if we need to understand our adversary, because I, you know, like the usual suspects, the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world didn't exist. I think that's part of what we've seen is that it's the removing of the adversary, You either by the church or by, you know, the atheist or the academic or the post-inlightment society we live in is there is none, right? There is no source of evil. And yet we're confronted with it. And Doug, I love what you said, man.

You had a great encapsulation of blurry creatures and making it clear. And I loved how you put that. And, you know, unknowingly maybe, you also made a very nice 80s reference when we're talking about the fish. Because who didn't have a fish on the back of their grand caravan in the 80s? Right, little fish emblem. They were everywhere. My parents had one. So, you know, blurry 80s, theology and creatures, and this has been fun.

It's always, always a pleasure to have you on. And, like, I think my brain broke for a while. I was trying to make this all make sense. And I think I need to, this is one of the ones I think I need to listen to again, because I think what you're talking about and the viewpoints are things people need to consider and hold. And, you know, put that in the blender and let it, and let it marinate it. And because I think what I love about the show, Nate, as it barrels on, is that we just want to get back to the scripture and the context and try to better understand everything around us in this world we live in and the weird and everything in between.

But I always take it back to what the scripture says, to what the word actually says. So that's why I love like, I guess, getting to sit and listen to guys like yourself that have spent the time, put the hours in, and give us perspective on the many Satan's, the adversary. the accuser, the enemy of our souls, and the prince of Rome in these many hats, whether it be Zeus to Jupiter, and yet, you know, like Solomon said, there's nothing new of the sun. And I love how you just cap it off because, you know, Jesus is the king of kings, man. There is none like him, and he's going to come back with the sword, and he's going to write all these wrongs, and then he's going to wipe away all the tears at the same time. It's not the beautiful dichotomy of the God we serve as he wipes away the tears at the same time he's vanquishing evil.

You know, when you're talking about this subject, it's, like I said, everybody has different opinions on revelation and how it's going to work itself out. And, you know, the more I've thought about this book and read different views that are out there and tried to think about them, I've found them all very helpful. They all have different things that they bring to the table that are helpful. And to be able to talk about them openly, even when people haven't necessarily heard of some of them, I think I can be very very, very beneficial for people. Because like you said, the point of this is to try and understand God's word better. And the best way that you do that is iron sharpens iron. You just talk about it with each other.

And don't be afraid of people having a different opinion and changing your own mind. This is what's all about. Our society in America's forgotten this. The world's forgotten this. Well, it's been just, by design. Well, sure. It's the hive mind. You know, don't deviate from the hive mind.

and do what we say. It's kind of, you know, putting people in a corner and yeah, but it's true. You talk about certain things. You know, Tucker said that. There's things I couldn't talk about. If I said this, if I even asked the question, I'm out. I lose my job the next day. But it makes me think, though, like David had heard podcasts of his day.

So when he gets up against Goliath, he already knew what was going on. He knew what his ancestors had dealt with. He knew what he was dealing with. with and he had the confidence to take this thing down because he heard the stories he knew right he had the confidence in that moment i think because there were stories there had to be stories of people killing these giants for for a long time of course i were in truth is knowledge uh or truth is power when you know what you're up against kind of what you just said with sunsou you know you know what you're up against then the battle is almost over no the enemy know yourself and i and i think

in the context of that, it's knowing who we are. The imagio, the image bears, we are the sons and daughters of the most high. And his spirit lives in us if you believe. And you need to know that. Know that, know your enemy. You're not fair the result of 100 battles. And that's the context I like that in because it's just, listen, like everything is, we talked a lot about the supernatural and the spiritual realm and the way that it legally operates in the way that things go. It is a battlefield. And there are rules of engagement. And that's the point of the binding, Luke. The binding is the rules of engagement. It's the covenant. That's the language of Old Testament binding. This is the rules that you have and you're not allowed to break them. And when you have somebody that has the power and

authority now, because you want it, then there's nothing that Satan can do about that. That's right. Love that. If people aren't, I don't get a dime for this, but if people want to learn more about this, I have a whole Revelation series that's up on our website, our church website. It's a RBCNC.com. We did a revelation series. a couple of years ago. So pretty fresh. And all the PDFs are up there, download them, take whatever you want, do whatever you want with it. Hopefully it would be helpful to people. There's lots of charts and pictures and stuff like it to help. And the stuff that we talked about last time as well with the stars and all that and those different chapters is there.

And we went through the whole book. So hopefully this conversation, people can take that to another level if they want to by just going there and taking the deep dive if they want to. That's right. That's right. And you can get Doug's book right now. That's the free stuff. Now, talk about the stuff that pays the bills.

Go out there and support Doug Van Dorn. You got a re-release version of the Giants. We plugged it to Barry Vien of the show. We'll plug it again. And it's got a chef's kiss. That's a beautiful chef's kiss. Luke's endorsement on the book itself, guys. It's not worth a lot, guys.

But it's there. inside but it could have been on the outside but he got it too much that's cool we'll let we'll let luke be looks looks looks better at that they're all at amazon you can go to my website douglas van dorn com or you can go to uh just amazon and type in my name and up will come different books love it all right brother's so good to see you thanks for tonight thanks for this thanks to having me back on guys i always love coming on and talking next time it's going to be it's going to be let me let me guess like Michael, the arching angel. Oh, we could do Michael.

That would be fun. I like that. That's the next blurry creature. You go big or go home. There you go. I love it. Home run, baby. Or strike.

No, yeah, we got to do this again, Doug. This is awesome. Yeah, thanks, Doug. Until next time. Roll the time.