A Great Gap: The War Begins - The Cosmic War: Satan, Demons, and the Kingdom of God

Hey, I'm Pastor Steve Hole.

I want to empower you today to walk in your true identity as a worshiper and warrior.

Today, embrace the power of God's Word and the Holy Spirit.

Welcome to the Born for War podcast.

Well, seminaries rarely teach it.

Most pastors don't know how to handle it.

Rarely do churches equip their members with it.

Most believers have no idea what to do about it.

And the id is this cosmic war of the satanic, the demonic, and the kingdom of God.

And how they, how they, there's a battle of good and evil, light and darkness happening all around us right now.

And it's kind of scary for a lot of people.

I know I just noticed that they've just, I didn't even realize that we were starting this at the time when they're doing another version of the Exorcist that's just coming out.

And the reason they do that is because people are fascinated with the paranormal.

People are fascinated with the idea of the demonic and satanic world.

And probably not in a proper way, but I will say that God's put something within us that does intuitively and naturally understand there's more that's going on than what meets the eye.

And we're living, you know, we're living in the in the 21st century, and most of us in this room have lived in the 20th century.

And what we see in the 20th and 21st centuries, we see the advent of radio, we see the advent of TV, movies, stuff like that.

And it helps us understand there's actually right now, as we're sitting in this room, there's sound waves flowing through this room.

And if we if you picked up a radio, it would not be surprising, or you picked up your phone, it would not be surprising.

You pick up words, you pick up voices that you can't hear unless you have the right system to capture that.

Or in the same way, I'm hoping that over the next number of months I can help you capture what's already happening in a dimension that you cannot see.

And these particular spiritual beings sometimes materialize in this world.

They materialize in objects and they materialize in people.

Literally, we know of angels unaware that you, how many of you would think that when you look back in your life, you might have interacted with an angel that looked like a person?

See, there's a lot of us like that.

But I want to take us back to the beginning of time as we have it in Scripture.

So here's the thing you got to remember about what we're doing.

You can't miss.

Okay?

I'm building a case, and each one builds on the other more than normal.

I mean, we're building a case when we go through Romans, which we just finished, or we're building a case when we're going through Ephesians, which we've done before.

But this is kind of different because this might not be information that you've had.

Um, and it might be a little bit a cause for maybe some discomfort as we go through it, because it was to me some 35 years ago when I first discovered this stuff as a missionary.

So I was in Japan, I was dealing with the demonic on an almost a daily basis, and I just dove in.

Kind of like I've told you with the homosexual question, I've dove in.

And that's kind of the Steve Holt way.

If I don't know something, I dive in and I try to listen to as many different perspectives as I can, not just Christian and even not just conservative and evangelical, but I look at all of it.

Not so much that it ever really changes my viewpoint in a dramatic way, but it gives me perspective to have confidence to be able to debate or come into interaction with people who have a different version without getting, you know, frustrated.

Because people who get upset in a theological question, when I see people on TV or when I see people in a podcast and they really get all intense and they're really mean-spirited and hateful, what it says to me is they're not very smart.

I mean, that's just, I'm just telling you, because there's no need.

You know, you talk to a mechanic who understands how to do a, you know, a Formula One race car, and he comes to a place where he doesn't know exactly what he's supposed to do.

You don't see him ranting and raving and getting all frustrated because he's a mechanic.

So he he mechanically figures it out, he analyzes it, and then he fixes it.

And so, in the same way, the more you know, the more you're aware of issues, then the more you can walk in joyful confidence, and you can even say, I don't know, and guess what?

Nobody knows that.

What?

Yeah, I've studied that.

I can tell you that's a question that's out there, and different perspectives have not figured it out.

So you're saying it's totally this.

I'm just telling you, history, theologues, and those who research these things would disagree with you that in reality we we that's a question mark.

We don't know.

That's a gray area.

Well, you can't know this.

I'm trying to help you, and most of you won't dig in like I do on these issues.

So my hope is to say 12 weeks from now, you're gonna go, I know spiritual warfare better than most seminary uh professors do.

And I know that's gonna be a fact, which that's not saying a lot.

Okay, but anyway.

Um so we live in a three-dimensional world, okay?

And I'm gonna use terms like fourth dimension.

Now, there's different perspectives on fourth dimension.

One particular author who made it famous in the 70s used fourth dimension as a dimension of faith.

I'm not doing that, I'm using it as a spiritual dimension, and I'm gonna call it the fourth dimension.

Here's some of the terms I'll use: fourth dimension, unseen world, invisible world, the heavenlies, and the cosmic realm.

Now, when Dr.

Christopher Ewan was with us, and many of you were there, so you've already heard this, but I'm gonna quickly cover it because our church is pretty big now, and so many people were not at the conference and did not hear it.

I'm gonna give you a quick tutorial on the three aspects of hermeneutics.

Okay, there's a that's a fun word, right?

Everybody talks about hermeneutics when they're at work.

Let's go have a hermeneutical brunch after the service.

No, hermeneutics is the art and science of Bible interpretation.

And I think it's important to cover really quickly, just skim the top of it so that um you understand where I'm going with some of the because we're gonna jump around in the Bible.

We're actually gonna go Genesis to Revelation, we're gonna go Genesis to Revelation today in 30.18 seconds.

30 minutes and 18 seconds.

Okay, don't turn there, but let me uh let me give you.

So if you're taking notes, the three aspects of hermeneutics, hermeneutics is the art and study of Bible interpretation.

There's three parts.

One is inspiration.

In 2 Timothy 3.16, we read, all scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction, righteousness.

That means it's God breathed.

That means at the road, we actually believe in 2 Timothy 3.16 that God breathed life into the authors who wrote the words that we call Scripture.

And that the Bible we have today is inerrant, means without error, infallible, and truly authoritative.

We can trust in the truth of Scripture.

Now, you lose that.

If you lose inspiration, you start, there begins to be a domino effect in your life because you don't have a standard by which to live by.

So at the road, I can't speak for other churches in the city, of course, but at the road, we believe in the inspiration or the God-breathed nature of the Bible.

So we believe that this book is the word of God, not the word of men.

So men wrote it, but they were inspired by God, and we can trust it.

Every stroke is perfect.

Number two, under hermeneutics, is exegesis.

Another big word, but exegesis means that we believe in reading, studying, and interpreting the Bible by what the author meant to convey in a particular passage.

So, men and women, it's not good enough just to read a verse and say, what does that mean to me?

I mean, it's a good start, and there's nothing wrong with that.

It's kind of a devotional way of looking at the Bible.

But if you do that all the time, you put yourself in the position of error because what it means to you may not have anything to do with what the intent of the author was and the context in which he was writing.

So it's important to understand it's called exegesis.

So that's what I just did with 2 Timothy 3.16.

All scripture is given by inspiration of God.

We do exegesis, we read out of a passage the intent of the author, and then we apply it to our lives here at the road.

And that's why most of the time I go chapter by chapter and verse by verse through the scriptures.

Now, third, context.

So, first inspiration, second, exegesis, third, context.

There's three parts to context.

And uh the first is literary.

Why was that particular passage written?

Why was it written?

What's the genre?

Some books of the Bible are historical in nature, some are poetic in nature.

There's always a problem.

I mean, especially in the New Testament.

There's always a problem that calls that book to be written.

And so that's why having a study Bible is really good.

You can have a study Bible, you know, give you the background on a book.

That's that and gives you the literary behind it.

Second, under literary would then be, under context, I mean is historical.

So when was it written?

Why was it written?

Who is it written to?

So knowing, again, we're going back to the intent of the author.

And then thirdly, under content is canonical, and this is really important today.

Because what canonical means is that we're interpreting a passage of the Bible based on the Bible.

So if you hear, and we're notorious for this in the church, where we take and build an entire doctrine on one verse.

This is what the Jehovah's Witnesses have done, but I won't go into that.

That's what the Mormons have done, but we're not going to do that.

Most of your cult groups and Christian sects that have gone awry have tended to not follow what I'm talking about in a canonical hermeneutic, in that, you know, when we come to a passage that's problematic, we compare it with the rest of Scripture.

That's what you, a lot of times, that's what your study Bibles do.

So when you look at your study Bible, and I don't have one right here with me, but the one I use has a middle column and it shows all these verses that are similar all through the Bible.

And that's just, man, that's just a thumbnail sketch.

There's probably two dozen other verses that go with a particular verse of any verse in the Bible.

And people have done the work on that, and it's amazing.

That's why study Bibles can be helpful to cross-reference different things.

So the beautiful tapestry of the one unifying message of the Bible is very, very clear to us.

So on a controversial topic like the cosmic war, I say all that because I want to set you up to understand over the next three months or so, I'm going to be doing that.

We're going to be popping around, but I've done my work as far as bringing it together, I hope.

And I think you'll find that that's true.

So this is different than a book study.

This is definitely more of a canonical study of the entire scripture, the sweep of scripture, as it relates to that.

So let me give you a thesis for the cosmic war.

Let me give you three thoughts.

Um I know it's all introduction right now, but we are gonna we actually are gonna dive into the word here.

But thesis on the cosmic war.

Number one, the Bible instructs the believer that we are in a cosmic war against powers of darkness in the fourth dimension.

That's number one.

Number two, the Bible equips us in how to fight and win this cosmic war.

So you're not just like, you're you're not just getting pushed around with no idea what to do with demons.

And I'll talk about haunted houses because I've been in them and things like that.

Uh, you actually can take control of this realm and you can walk in victory.

But you gotta follow the scriptures and what it says.

Number three, we are wired to be worshipers and warriors.

Men and women, you are wired to be worshipers and warriors.

If we learn, if, if we learn how to use our spiritual weapons correctly, we can overcome the enemy in our lives.

And that's absolutely the truth.

That's what convinced me to do this study 35 years ago.

Was I getting my spiritual tail kick by the enemy in Asia.

And I was convinced that my American evangelical Christianity had not prepared me to be an effective missionary.

So I really started to dive in and some books and grow in that.

So now let's start with this.

Let's start with John 10.

So if you have your Bible, turn to John 10.

And in one sense, this is kind of seminal for the entire study, John 10, 10.

I love John 10, 10 because it sums up, I think it sums up the Christian life so well, and that we're in a battle.

A pitched battle.

John 10.

Jesus is speaking, the thief, he's talking about Satan or Lucifer, and we're gonna talk about Lucifer a lot more next week.

The thief does not come except to steal, kill, and destroy.

That's all he does.

That's his job description.

That's what Lucifer has been doing since his fall.

That's what Satan and demons do.

They come to steal, kill, and destroy.

And by the way, Satan and Lucifer are the same.

Different titles, different meanings, but same individual, this cosmic being, this divine being.

I have come, though, that you might have life and that you might have it more abundantly.

So the choice you'll have to make as we go through this study is do you want to follow God's plan or do you want to follow satanic plans?

And I can promise you that if you don't follow with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength God's plan, you will be following Satan's plan.

And he's the God of this age.

That's what he does.

So if it so a great example would be the fact that if you have been hurt deeply by someone, I'm sure this is not true of anyone in this room, but if somehow, somehow, in a miraculous way, you got hurt by someone, okay?

And you have a decision to make of whether to forgive or not to forgive.

All right?

You have to decide to forgive or you won't forgive.

And if you won't forgive, a root of bitterness will come into your life, right?

Okay?

That's playing into demonic, then there's demons of bitterness.

And you can get demonized.

I'm not saying you can get demon-possessed.

I don't believe a Christian can be demon-possessed.

I do believe a Christian can be demonized.

And that means, and that literally that word in Greek means to be influenced by demons.

If that weren't true, then why is every particular book of the Bible in the New Testament talking about spiritual warfare if it doesn't exist?

So that's the reality.

So that's a good starting point for us right here.

So Satan and demons come to steal, kill, and destroy.

If we follow Christ, we can walk in abundant life.

We can walk in victory.

And I'll be talking about how to do that in the weeks coming down as we get closer to.

I'm going to start big picture.

It's going to be super big picture.

And then I'm going to gradually, each week it's going to get a little narrower and narrower, narrower into our individual life.

I need to share an illustration.

So normally I'm not here on the second weekend of October.

For 25 years, I've been an elk hunter on the second weekend opening of rifle season up in the flat tops of Colorado.

And I'm a really good hunter.

I mean, I was telling Leah today, you know, I sometimes think about it, like, I'm really good at what I do.

And um, and I'm I'm kind of intuitive.

I'm an in I'm an intuitive person.

And after being in so many different situations in the wild over the years, I kind of know weather patterns and I know things.

Well, one of the things you learn, if you guys are hikers, some of you guys are hikers and outdoorsmen, outdoors women and hunters and stuff like that, is you learn to read a topographical map.

It's kind of like your Bible when you're first learning.

But what's interesting about a topographical map is there's actually a reason for all the contours of lines as it relates to elevation.

So you could be looking at a map and you can even look at 3D.

Uh 3D is probably a better way to look at it, but we didn't have that until recently.

Um, more for me, it was just a paper map.

And you're looking at it and you see you see patches of gray and white, you see patches of green, which is forest and parks and all that.

But these little contours, these little elevation markers, are interesting because the closer they come together means the steeper grade of the elevation, right?

So it doesn't look like much.

You're just looking at it, you go, okay, whatever.

And this is what you do when you're first learning.

You're like, okay, that looks like it might be a little steeper.

But then you get there.

And you get there and you realize that how tight they were, that actually means it's a cliff.

I mean, it's a it's a friggin' cliff, man.

And you're like, and you were planning to hunt over there, so you got you got to drop down like 300 feet, straight down, and then walk across this valley, and then it's you know 300 feet back up.

And all it was was some little lines.

I mean, it's like no big deal, right?

And it just seems like I'll do that in 30 minutes.

And then two hours later, you reach your destination completely exhausted, used up all your energy, you have no more water, and this is really gonna be a fun hunt, right?

Okay, now, the reason I say that is look at Genesis 1.

So everybody turn to Genesis 1.

And this is one of those theological, contoured, topographical lines that most people miss.

Now, I will tell you that what I'm gonna share with you, not every theologian agrees with.

So I'm happy to admit that I am from a perspective that some would disagree with, and I'm totally cool with that.

It doesn't change the essence and the thesis of our study, but I am gonna start with something.

So, right, I want you to read with me.

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

The earth was without form and void, and darkness was on the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the water.

Now, if we read that and we're looking at sort of a biblical topographical map, no big deal.

But it's my belief that the lines get really tight.

In other words, there's a drop-off between the period of earth in verse one and the beginning of the earth in verse two.

The meaning of without form and void is a wasteland, chaos, and wilderness.

Now I can't find any place in scripture where God creates wasteland, chaos, and wilderness.

There's no place in scripture to support that.

Yet it says, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, but then there's a period, and it says in verse 2, the earth was without form.

It was a wilderness, it was a void, it was a darkness, it was a wasteland.

So I want you to note that.

And if you're if you've got room in your Bible, you could write over to the side to the left of the right column, you could write a gap.

You could write a gap of millions of years.

A gap of millions of years.

Let me explain what.

I'm saying.

I'm gonna now go to a canononical context for my explanation.

You take the Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Everybody in the evangelical church that understands theology believes in the Trinity.

And all of your um your Roman, Orthodox, Protestant, and Evangelical churches all agree with the idea of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit being of one substance.

It's actually our creed, that one substance.

But there's no place in Scripture where it's perfectly written out that way.

In other words, you have to look at all of Scripture to come to the idea of there being a Trinity.

That's using canonical context in your hermeneutic.

Same thing with Isaiah 53.

Okay, so Isaiah 53 is the chapter and verse about the suffering servant.

And Jews today, Orthodox Jews, believe that that's talking about Israel.

Okay, but we as evangelical Christians believe it's talking about Jesus.

But you couldn't understand Isaiah 53 without Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John and the suffering of Christ.

So those are examples.

So back to our passage.

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, period.

Then verse 2, the earth was without form and void, darkness on the face of the deep.

The Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.

New King James Version, NKJV, says without form and void, but the New American Standard translation is more accurate here, and it says formless and desolate emptiness.

Other translations have waste and void and formless and barren.

Other translations have it as waste and void, formless and barren, and we get the Hebrew words tohu bohu, meaning a wasteland, wilderness, confusion, a wreck, or in one French translation, topsy-turvy.

God does not create things topsy-turvy.

Comparing the Bible with the Bible, it's important that we compare Genesis 1.2 to what Isaiah tells us of how God creates.

So this is Isaiah 45, 18.

For thus says the Lord who created the heavens.

He did not create a chaos, is the revised standard version of that particular verse in Isaiah.

So I believe there's a gap.

And what I mean is that God in times immemorial, we don't know, God created the earth.

Now this is before, I'm talking about this is pre-six days, pre-human beings being created.

That this was created, and then something happened.

Something happened where there was a war.

I'm going to say there was a battle that occurred.

Something happened that changed things.

And by verse 2, it could have been millions of years.

It could have been billions of years.

Okay?

We don't know.

Or it could have been, it could have been five minutes.

We don't know.

I'm not going to draw any conclusions from that.

But the fact that there's this gap.

So our thesis today is that God creates everything perfectly and it's good.

So verse 1, it's good.

Verse 3, it's good.

3 on, the rest of the Bible, verse Genesis 1, 3 on is all good, good, good, good, good.

But there's this gap I'm proposing.

Something has happened.

Something has changed, and the earth is no longer splendid, majestic, or beautiful.

Donald Gray Barnhouse, the great preacher and pastor of 10th Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, writes on this passage, quote, that something tremendous and terrible happened to the first perfect creation is certain.

We know that later the earth, which had become waste and empty, was reformed and refashioned in the sixth days and peopled by the newly created beings, Adam and his wife, and that God renewed and restored again, of which it is stated six times that God saw that it was good.

We have every right to argue from analogy that the original creation, long before Adam's remade world was cursed because of earlier sin, fell into chaos because of the righteous judgment of God upon some outbreak of rebellion somewhere back before the chaos of the second verse of Genesis, there was a great tragedy and a terrible catastrophe.

So we don't know exactly what that was, except we do have an indication in Revelation 12.

So I told you we were going to go from Genesis to Revelation, so I wasn't lying, right?

So now turn to Revelation 12.

We're look at this very famous passage, Revelation 12, 7 through 10.

I'm imagining that the painting that was used by my daughter-in-law Mary to create the graphic for the cosmic war that you have was, I think that's Raphael's painting.

And Raphael's painting comes from Revelation 12.

So she was trying, he was trying to depict Revelation 12, 7 through 10 of this.

So let's look at that.

So Revelation 12, 7 through 10.

And war broke out in heaven.

Michael and his angels fought with the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought, but they did not prevail.

Nor was a place found for them in heaven any longer.

So we're going to talk about this more next week, about the origins of Lucifer and his job description when he was in the heavenly, but in the heavenly realm.

But here you see it as a side comment.

They were in heaven and now they lost their place in heaven.

So the great dragon was cast out, the serpent of old, called devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world, he was cast to the earth.

Now that's what I'm proposing.

Not every theologue agrees with this, but this is what I'm proposing is that this gap between Genesis 1, 1 and Genesis 1, 2, is when this took place, this particular event.

And he was cast to the earth, and the earth, as it was at that time, was made into a chaos.

It was made into a desolate place because of this battle.

And his angels were cast out with him.

So a third of the angels of heaven went with Satan.

They became demons.

Then I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, Now salvation and strength and the kingdom of our God and the power of his Christ have come.

For the accuser of our brethren who accused them before our God day and night has been cast down.

Now, I'll just give you a maybe an expectation for next week and the week after and week after that, is that these go together, that this idea that satanic, demonic powers were cast down, is actually analogous to what can happen in your life.

In other words, as you allow more and more of the kingdom of God to have presence in your life, you're gonna cast the devil out.

You're gonna cast demons out, you're gonna cast the influence of darkness out of your life.

He knows God's plan.

He was cast out of heaven.

And so when we come and we begin to bring the kingdom into our heart and into our life, you start driving them out.

They know that plan because it happened to them in times immemorial.

So something happened in the fourth dimension.

A battle took place in time immemorial, we don't know when, and Satan and his and a third of the angels of heaven, these demonic powers, were cast down to the earth.

They now have their abode on the earth.

And they hate you.

Because you're created in the image of God.

So the only thing that Satan and demons hate more than God Himself is you.

They hate you.

That's why what we see happening in Hollywood right now, what we're seeing in some of the deeper state of what's happening in everything from the military, industrial, surveillance, gotta have a war complex, to big pharma, big tech, stuff like that.

It's demonic, you guys.

It's to control you.

It's a mind control game.

And these people don't even know what they're messing with.

Because they have no idea how to fight it, they're inviting it in, and they'll take any kind of power they can have and get it any way they can.

That's the satanic, demonic way.

So in 2 Corinthians 4 we read, but even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing, whose minds the God of this age is blinded who do not believe, lest the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine on them.

So these people don't even know what they're doing.

They're blinded, and Lucifer's getting a foothold.

And he's had a foothold for 75 years in the U.S.

government.

I think since World War II, I think I could chronicle for you, especially with the rise of the CIA and the surveillance networks that we have, that some pretty evil people have been in place all behind the scenes.

And what's great about the new media that we have is a lot of this is getting uncovered that could be hidden so much easier in the past.

So this is what the God of the age is doing.

But Satan is also the prince of the power of the air over the earth.

Ephesians 2, 2.

You once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience.

So we don't like to think of it, but it's true.

That if you're a son or a daughter of disobedience, the power of the air, the spirit, who now works on the earth as the prince of the power, is working in you.

That's kind of a bummer, right?

Do you want to you want to partner with Satan or do you want to partner with Jesus?

I think Jesus is a lot better.

So now turn to Ephesians 2, and we'll conclude here for today.

So Ephesians 2, so go back to the New Testament, and then we'll close with this.

And next week we'll get into more about Lucifer and how he tempts us and all that fun stuff.

So Ephesians 2.

You gotta start off.

I gotta end with a good note because it's kind of a bummer right now.

Okay, so start at verse 1.

He made, he made you alive.

You were dead in trespasses and sins, in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works, and the sons of disobedience, among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lust of the flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others.

But God, who is rich in mercy, because of his great life with which he loved us, even we were dead in our trespasses, he has made us alive together with Christ.

Isn't that exciting?

So, you guys, if you walk with Christ, the light of Christ will shine in your life and he will make you alive and he'll make you free.

I like alive and I like free.

How about you?

That's what Christ does, that's what the kingdom comes.

And then in 2 Corinthians 4 we read, for it is the God who commanded light to shine out of darkness, who has shown in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

I love that passage because um we all have darkness.

Every one of us in this room has some dark areas of our life that we're battling with.

And the MO of God, the MO of Jesus, the MO of the Holy Spirit, is that He comes and He shines light in your dark caves.

He comes to set you free from shame, set you free from blame, set you free from addictions.

He can do that, but you've got to choose him.

Isn't that exciting?

Thank you for listening to the Born for War podcast.

We hope today's message has empowered you to make a difference in your world.

To connect with Pastor Steve's sermons, books, and blog, visit Steve Holtonline.org.

God bless.