Hank Hanegraaff "God's Protection in Spiritual Warfare" (FULL) Interview

I think one thing you have to recognize is that Jesus Christ came in the inauguration of the kingdom which will be consummated when it comes a second time and when he did he made a spectacle out of principalities and powers of darkness he triumphed over them through the work of the cross so there is a curtailing of the work of Satan but that does not mean that Satan still is not active in the world of course he is our place is not to determine whether the maladies of life are a function of the world the flesh or the devil but we are to put on the full armor of God so that we can stand in the midst of spiritual warfare the full armor of God is the ultimate antidote if we put on the full armor of God we're invincible in spiritual warfare if we do not we're guaranteed casualties well you haven't seen a black hole you haven't seen the force of gravity the fact that you don't see something doesn't mean that it does not exist again the Bible becomes the final Court of Arbitration because you can demonstrate that the Bible corresponds to reality therefore becomes an objective and reliable Authority and the Bible does make plain that there are principalities and powers of darkness that there are noncorporeal non-physical beings that inhabit this world that they were created by God and though they are spirit beings in no way does that suggest that they were not real beings in fact human beings themselves are body soul unities and when the body dies the soul leaves that body and continues to have awareness it doesn't have wareness extension in space because it's not physical but it continues to have awareness as a believer in the presence of God as a non-believer in torment according to the lord's own words from Luke chapter 16 well we are involved in spiritual war as Christians the real question is what is the antidote is the antidote for a believer to go to a deliverance session and have their demon in some way expelled or is the antidote to put on the full armor of God I would argue that the antidote has nothing whatsoever to do with deliverance it has everything to do with discipleship and the spiritual disciplines a Christian cannot by definition be inhabited by a demon reason for this is that our temple is the temple of the holy spirit and that temple can never be shared with a demon and Jesus makes that explicit in Matthew chapter 12 if you want to inhabit a strong Mans house he said you first have to bind the strongman in the case of a spirit indwelt believer that strongman is the Holy Spirit and that Holy Spirit within us will never be bound nor will our temple be shared with a vile demon no we have the Holy Spirit within us therefore a demon can bug us harasses but a demon can never possess us we are possessed of God God created Satan just as he created human beings he created them with volition had he not created them with volition or will love would be rendered meaningless so God created the angels in such a way that they could choose to love God or choose to rebel against God and a third of the Angels chose just that to rebel against God just as 2/3 of the Angels decided that they wanted to have relationship with God because that is the very thing for which they were created and the same thing holds true for human beings we can love God of our own volition or will or we can choose to reject God that's why CS Lewis said they're only two kinds of people in the world those who say to God thy will be done on bended knees and those to whom God in the end says thy will be done if you don't want a relationship with me in time I'm not going to force myself on you in eternity that is precisely what I'm suggesting I'm suggesting that God created the Angels in such a way that they could choose to follow and love God or they could choose to rebel against God and that very choice makes the love of angels for God who were an unfallen state a real and meaningful love by way of comparison or illustration if the only way I could get my wife to love me or my kids to love me was through force or coercion that love would be rendered meaningless in the same sense we were created to have love and fellowship with God and that love to be meaningful has to be volitional demons just as angels have requisite knowledge and therefore they have been actualized in their choices and thus we can know beyond the peradventure of a doubt that demons will always be in that demonic state of opposition to God's will and purposes just as angels will forever be in the state of forwarding God's will and purposes how an angel can turn from loving God after seeing God and experiencing God is a question that has a correspondence in humanity how is it that even as a believer who has a relationship with God and is indwelt by the Holy Spirit can yet continue to sin willfully now when you continue to sin willfully as a believer you also do exactly what John suggests and first John chapter one you confess your sins you recognize that he is faithful and just he will forgive you of your sins and cleanse you from all unrighteousness but we continue to do the unthinking the unthinkable we we rebelled against God in the present even though we are bought by his blood so it is a rational sin by its very nature is irrational whether it is sin that came in terms of the fall of Satan or sin that is perpetuated in the life of a believer well the whole idea with the notion that there is a gap between Genesis 1:1 in Genesis chapter 1 - the problem with this kind of idea and the notion that there was a pre-adamic race that perished not in Noah's Flood but in Lucifer's flood the systemic problem is it's ad hoc there's absolutely no basis for it whatsoever in fact the idea came into existence with respect to people in in 19th century because of the advance of science and so they felt like because science demonstrated that the universe is not young but old there has to now be a place to stick geological ages and that would be between Genesis 1:1 in Genesis 1:2 so the idea was a counter to the advance of science but that was completely unnecessary and the reason it's unnecessary is that the Bible isn't designed to give us a chronology to begin with the Bible in Genesis chapter 1 is designed to give us a hierarchy of creation culminating in the crowning jewels of God's creation humankind so it's completely unnecessary if you want to know how old the universe is you don't look to special revelation the Bible you look to general Latian the universe that god has created his his imprimatur his fingerprints are on the universe in fact that's the very thing that gave rise to science science could never have a rose in in the Greek world because the Greeks believed even though that they had codified correctly the laws of logic they believed that the universe was ministered by Moody gods and therefore was capricious unknowable it was Agustin and Christian thinkers that said no gods impre mater his fingerprints are on the universe and therefore we can learn to think God's thoughts after him and that gave rise to Christian universities and obviously to science as well what happens with the rebellion of Satan is there's a break in relationship and that break in relationship is communicated as a fall Satan fell like lightning as it were he was separated from the goodness and grace of God and is so separated from that goodness and grace for all eternity so what happens with sin is it creates a break in fellowship angels were created for fellowship with God demons now experience a break in that fellowship human beings were created in the imago day in the image of God for fellowship with God sin creates a break in that fellowship and of course in the biblical story there is a way of redemption and that is the second Adam did what the first Adam could not do he lived the perfect life which we could never live and offers us his perfection is an absolutely free gift we can't earn it or deserve it we can only reach out the hand of a beggar and receive the gift of a king demons turned on humanity because that's what sin does sin not only creates a break in relationship or fellowship with God but sin creates a break in relationship and fellowship with other created beings and so Satan now is bent on creating as much havoc as he possibly can not only havoc in the physical world but havoc in in in in in the relationship that human beings have with their Creator well a demon is a non-physical being created by God but not created in the fallen state of a demon but created as an angel so a demon therefore is an angel in a fallen state and as such is a non-physical but yet a real spiritual being angels by God's prerogative can take on physical form and there's ample evidence for that in the Bible you see angel often ease or appearances of angels for example the Lord and two angels appeared on the plains of memra - to Abraham so angels by God's creative prowess can take on physical form demons cannot demons do not have creative power and therefore they can harass you they can bug you but they can't stab you they can't throw you up against a wall they don't have physicality so they can't act in that way in the physical world so the way in which they influence is through mind-to-mind communication as I like to say Satan as it were sits on our shoulder and whispers into our ear the whisper cannot be heard with the physical ear but it can penetrate the ear of the mind and that's precisely why we're told in spiritual warfare put on the full armor of God if we do we're invincible in spiritual warfare if we don't we're guaranteed casualties there are many different subjective experiences and if you talk to Christians about demonology you can hear all kinds of anecdotes what we always have to do is test all things in light of Scripture and hold fast to that which is good I can't explain what's going on in every single anecdote I wasn't there I don't know all the details what I can do is I can test what someone says in light of Scripture and that's what we're called to do the Bible is the infallible repository of redemptive revelation we need to test all things in light of Scripture hold fast to the good the one thing we know is Satan could never take on physical form because from a biblical perspective Jesus precludes the possibility when the believers thought that maybe Christ had appeared well jesus said a spirit does not have flesh and bone as you see that I have and so he's pointing to the fact that this isn't an aberration this is really me in the flesh now if spirits could take on physicality well that argument would be null and void because a demon could have masqueraded as the resurrected christ now not only would you lose epistemic warrant for the most significant event in all of history the resurrection of Jesus Christ which is the earnest of our resurrection but Jesus's argument would be found flawed and therefore he would lose his unique status as being wholly divine and incapable of error yet the notion that you can have sleep paralysis that a demon can create weight upon your chest again has no basis in reality because spiritual beings don't extension in space and therefore they don't have wait we always say a demon is said to be where a demon acts because demons are not omnipresent they're not like God they're spiritual beings in that sense like God but they're not omnipresent they're not omnipotent they are not omniscient they don't know everything they don't have all power and they can't be everywhere at the same time so they they don't share those Omni attributes with God but they are real spiritual beings but again beings that don't have extension in space in the sense of having all of those physical properties that cause weight and the kinds of things that are attributed to them by superstitious paradigms well unfortunately in our culture we have bought into mythology that mythology even involves medieval sexual spirits who can impregnate women and these kinds of things I I was seeing an example of a a Christian Exorcist who was exercising a woman who was impregnated by a demon therefore they had to abort the child this is the stuff of mythology again demons don't have physicality they don't have a sexual genitalia and therefore they can't have sex with women this whole notion by the way comes in some part as a result of a misreading of Genesis chapter 6 in which the sons of God go into the daughters of men and this is thought to be sons of God being fallen angels going into the daughters of men but this again is a misapprehension of Scripture first of all Genesis chapter 6 where you find the passage has nothing to do with a judgment on demons has to do with judgment unfallen humanity who are judged in the flood that's the context number one number two we should always recognize that words and phrases are not univocal they're equivocal they take on the meaning that the context allows them to have I can talk about a can of tuna I can talk about being thrown in the can and I can say I can do something those are three different uses of the word can the context determines my meaning the same thing is true sons of God in Scripture can have to do with fallen angels but it can also have to do with God's representatives to his people on earth so the phrase can be used in different ways to impose in the context of Genesis six the notion these are fallen angels having sex with women is responding in some sense to a superstitious worldview it is imbibe increased ish as' and importing it into a Christian worldview where it doesn't belong demons that impregnate women or that in some way have physical communication with human beings it's the stuff of Greek mythology not Christian theology well it first of all when you think about the sexual function it is most physical and metaphysical in nature so God is created in such a way that we're wired for sex which is not only something that emanates in the body but it has its origin in the mind itself so we're we're psychosomatic beings and therefore the sexual function follows that parameter or takes place within those parameters so there are all kinds of things that you can have in terms of subjective experiences and here's the issue with subjective experiences they're notoriously unreliable you can think that something's absolutely real when it's not absolutely real you can wake up from a dream state you can be in deep sleep someone wakes you up and now you are in a period of time where you can't distinguish between that which was part of your dream state and that which is taking place in your wake state it's a subjective experience it's real it's powerful but again subjective experiences though not all bad all need to be tested in light of some objective frame of reference otherwise we end up in superstition Greek mythology and the kinds of things that actually hurt the advent of the Christian cause when you are submerged in superstition you can never really come to a true valuation of things and therefore all experience is no matter how powerful or real they seem to you have to be tested in light of an objective frame of reference demon possession never happens with respect to believers but we can say demon possession happens with respect to the unregenerate in fact the more you give yourself over to the things of a satanic worldview to the things of this world apart from God's world and the injection of the kingdom of God on earth the more you give yourself over to depravity the more you can be said to be possessed of Satan there are only two kinds of people in the world at the end of the day those who are possessed of God their temple the temple the Holy Spirit and those who altom utley must say I am of my father the devil yeah The Exorcist is a classic example as is Rosemary's Baby of pop culture beckoning and post modern Christians taking the bait I mean prior to 1973 Satan seemed all but dead and and gone the casualty of a modernist mindset but then with the advent of these kinds of movies Satan returned with a vengeance but the visions a Satan that returned was unbiblical and distorted again it is a great example of where we should as Christians set the standard for the world rather than the world through movies and through media and so forth setting the standard for Christians so we have a classic example here of a movie that gave rise to a robust deliverance movement within evangelicalism and so we became cultural imitators rather than cultural initiators we became microcosms of the culture as opposed to being change agents in the culture so rather than providing a corrective to the culture what we did was we bought into cultural paradigms and imported those paradigms into the Christian Church in a nutshell the problem with deliverance ministries is that they are a completely antithetical worldview to a biblical worldview a biblical worldview in terms of demonology tells us that spiritual warfare ultimately has to do with spiritual disciplines discipleship putting on the full armor of God so that we quiz withstand principalities and powers of darkness that's what Paul says be strong in the Lord in his mighty power put on the full armor of God first of all we should recognize that the thing that's most potent and powerful is not Satan's power to pillage but God's power to protect and if we put on the form of God we're invincible in spiritual warfare and that begins by putting on the belt of truth true has become absent in many ways in our culture we live in an age of internet lies which travel halfway around the world before truth has had the chance to put its boots on and so often Christians fall for the same thing they say yeah but look at the end result even if it's not true it works but we should never fall for that kind of mentality in the Christian worldview we should put on the belt of truth we are called to be arbiters of truth to a lost and searching generation putting on the former of God ought never to be a mere mantra for us in the sense that we memorize the pieces and we recite them as though they have some kind of magical efficacy know the full armor of God though we should know each part of the armor the full armor of God means more than knowing what the pieces are we need to understand what each piece represents so we need to know what it means to put on the belt of truth or the breastplate of righteousness that entails knowing what righteousness is all about what does it mean to take up the shield of faith so we can extinguish the flaming arrows of the evil one does it mean we take up a physical shield no it means that we understand what faith is faith is a channel of living trust between a human being and their God and and faith is only as good as the object in whom a displace so if we have faith in our own faith its credulity it's misplaced faith but if we have faith in God it is a sure foundation for living successfully so it's a matter of not only knowing what the pieces are but what they actually represent and mean within the context of a biblical worldview the reason that the Bible uses the full armor of God is the Bible is replete with metaphorical language metaphors serve as magnifying glasses that illumine truth we might otherwise miss so they're poignant and they're pointed there they're profound and they have meaning and so it's a matter for us to uncloak what is given to us in metaphorical language so we understand precisely what the metaphors are pointing to and that's why the analogy of faith that was first adopted by the Reformers because the Bible is now in the hands of the lady was adopted so that we would not unleash the floodgate of iniquity by misinterpreting the Bible but we would instead interpret Scripture in light of Scripture knowing that the holy scripture cannot be understood unless we understand its individual parts and we can't understand its individual parts without understanding the whole of Scripture so scripture is very synergistic and that's why it's so critical for believers to be biblically literate being biblically literate doesn't just mean that we can defend the Bible is true it means that we know if God has spoken what God has said and that entails the art and science and biblical interpretation it's an art in that the more you do it the better you get at it it's a science and that certain rules apply and this is somewhat lost in the Christian community today we're not only biblically illiterate to a great extent but we also don't know how to rightly divide the word of truth and as a result people come up with all kinds of bad meanings out of the scripture and secularists look at that and say if that's what the Bible teaches I don't want any part of it so reading the Bible for all it's worth or mining it for all its wealth is critical in our day and age the question as to whether exorcism or deliverance ministries are valid in the Christian Church is a question that requires explanation we can say on the one hand there's no role whatsoever categorically no role for deliverance of believers because believers by definition or indwelt by the Holy Spirit and their temple will not be shared with a demon and therefore deliverance for Christians is something that the Bible precludes however can there be deliverance for non-christians absolutely and the ultimate deliverance comes with the gospel because when the gospel penetrates the mind of an unbeliever they realize that they're sinners they repent of their sin and receive Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord then their temple is no longer a temple of Satan it becomes a temple of the Holy Spirit in dwelt by God himself Satan's strategy and spiritual warfare is to erase the imago Dei the image of God in humanity so that we become like unreasoning brute beasts using the imagery of Peter so that we become less and less human less and less what we were created to be that we give over to baser instincts that don't glorify God and build up humans but rather to generate all a civilization and culture and the antidote to that is always Christ we were we were created for restoration with God because in the beginning we were created with an imago Dei an image of God that was resplendent and glorious but in the fall it was tattered and marred as redeemed believers who received Jesus Christ as Savior Lord that image is gradually being restored in humanity and fallen humanity it's being exacerbated and becomes more prevalent in the individual and ultimately in Hell you have an erasure of the image of God in humanity so that there's no relationship with God and that is the hell if you will of hell in in pop culture Satan becomes the ruler of hell his demons become his caretakers and so you have these medieval pictures which are now important into moderns theá-- imported into modern theology of Satan and his demons demons torturing people with pitchforks and and tormenting human beings and so all of that is completely false hell was made for the devil and his angels they're not going to be caretakers themselves they themselves will be tormented in hell hell is the torment of being forever removed and separated from the glory of God so the medieval imagery which is designed to communicate a far greater and more graphic reality has been interpreted in wooden literalistic fashion and as a result of that we've lost the real import of what hell is one of the prevalent dangers in the Christian world today is what I would call conspiracy theories that are unfalsifiable and so we have Christians talking about secret cartels and the Illuminati and all these kinds of mythological fabrications which which ultimately don't help it is true that Satan has a hierarchy there are principalities there are powers of darkness and evil in the heavenly realms there are authorities all of these are biblical designations that you find in places like Ephesians chapter 6 10 through 20 so there's no question that there are principalities and powers of darkness but job is believers is never to try to figure out hierarchies of angels or even where our temptation is coming from do we know whether it's the world the flesh of the devil I grant you we don't know whether it's the world flesh or the devil what we're told is the antidote so rather than trying to figure out the sensational through sophistry and sensationalism what we need to do is embrace Scripture and the scripture gives us one antidote for spiritual warfare it is to put on the full armor of God so that when the day of evil comes you may be able to stand your ground and after you've done everything to stand so the point is not only knowing the individual pieces but what those individual pieces represent and a lot of people say well you know what all of the spiritual mapping that we are doing our spiritual paradigm with respect to satanic warfare has led people to righteousness but we can never as Christians suggest that the ends are justified by the means and therefore use means that are false or don't correspond to reality to say well this is the end and the end is a good end so we get stuck in sensationalistic paradigms when we should be stuck in the Bible and stuck in the Bible means that we recognize that Paul has made plain that if we put on the form of God we're invincible in spiritual warfare and I submit to you that many of the people who have sensationalized spiritual warfare are completely unaware of what it means to put on the full armor of God in other words what does righteousness mean what is truth without righteousness it's more ugly than a man's head would be on a beasts shoulders the man who knows the truth but fails to do it and accent unrighteousness is worse than the man who's ignorant so we have to understand what it means to embrace truth and righteousness and true biblical faith as opposed to a false view of faith what it means to be daily absorbed in prayer what it means to take up the shield of faith and the helmet of salvation and most of all the sword of the Spirit which is the word of God the end game for Satan and his minions has always been the same it is to disrupt the will and purposes of God and to take as many people into the abyss as he possibly can so Satan is a potent force defeated by Christ but yet active in the world and thus we must take our stand against principalities and powers of darkness against wickedness and evil and heavenly realms by putting on the full armor of God we always have to get back to the biblical paradigm for spiritual warfare in its discipleship and discipline the spiritual disciplines is ultimately the antidote to spiritual warfare a good football coach in the US Tom Landry who used to be the coach of the cap Dallas Cowboys one of the most famous football teams of all time Tom Landry is to say that a good football coach makes men do what they wouldn't ordinarily do so that they may be what they have always wanted to be and I would say that's true with respect to the Christian world if you want to be like Christ you have to exercise the very disciplines that Jesus Christ manifested during his earthly sojourn the problem is as Christians so often we have never gone beyond declaration which is to say I believe in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior to discipleship we are called to be disciples those who take on the cross those who daily follow Jesus Christ in living the crucified life against spiritual disciplines and discipleship is what we're being called to Satan ultimately will be thrown into the lake of burning sulfur which is a metaphor for being forever separated from the glory the goodness and grace of God the Bible uses metaphors for hell-like blackest darkness forever like burning sulfur like flames of fire but all of those metaphors point to a far more ghastly and graphic reality forever separated from God forever forever forever never-ending so what the Bible says about eternal separation corresponds to what the Bible says about eternal union with God jesus said do not be amazed at this a time is coming when all who and the grace will come out some will rise to live forever and some will rise to be forever condemned Satan's ploys Satan's pillaging Satan's goal is separation from the love and glory and goodness of God he wants to disrupt the kingdom Christ has come he has inaugurated the kingdom it will be consummated when he comes a second time and puts all things to right then in the new heavens and the new earth were in dwell righteousness the problem of Satan and sin will forever be resolved well one of the questions is why has it taken God so long to send Jesus a a second time to put all things to right I asked a different question Lord give us more time because as Christians we have been faithless there's a world of people that need to know the Savior we have been left as ambassadors for the king instead of being ambassadors for Jesus Christ most of us are secret agents who have never blown our cover before the unregenerate world my prayer is that Christians would hear the notion that God loves Satan is completely false in fact what we have to ultimately have is a concept of God that's biblical and a full orbed concept of God as a God not only of love but also a God of justice and judgment and Satan is under the judgment of God and the judgment of God is the deprivation of the very thing for which we were created angels in humans and that is relationship with God that relationship is severed so to say that God loves Satan is perfectly suited for a feel-good generation but it doesn't correspond to Scripture yeah the notion of generational spirits is completely unbiblical it actually comes from a biblical pretext it is the idea that the sins of the fathers are passed to the children to the third or fourth generation but the context of that information in Scripture is not that the sins pass on but that the consequences a sin pass on through the generations therefore if your father's an alcoholic there's a consequence in your life so it's the consequence of sin that passes down the Bible makes absolute explicit in passages like Ezekiel chapter 18 where there's not just a few verses but an entire chapter hammering home the point from various vantage points that the sins of the fathers are not the sins of the son that the Sun is not responsible for the sin of the father and the father not responsible for the sin of the son so the notion that spirits are passed down through the generations and that we're living with those spirits passed down through through the generations as an unbiblical notion there's no support to it whatsoever in Scripture so it's a popular paradigm in the present but has no biblical backing well it's looking into the past to renounce sins is is superstitious and deflective what we are called as not to look into the past except that you can learn from the past but what you are called to do is forgetting the things that are past and pressing on in the future to the high calling of God so what we do as Christians is we we restore the years that the locust of Eden by immersing ourselves in the Word of God in spiritual disciplines and discipleship and therefore we become powerful tools of righteousness redeeming the world transforming the world through the power of Christ my greatest concern with respect to spiritual warfare is that we get involved in superstition and sensationalism and forget to embrace the biblical antidote to spiritual warfare which can be summarized as the spiritual disciplines discipleship and ultimately learning to put on the full armor of God I'm fond of saying that if you put on the full armor of God you're invincible in spiritual warfare if you do not you are a guaranteed casualty well first of all let me say that Satan is wholly aware of the Bible in fact he used the Bible in his temptations of Jesus Christ and and Jesus Christ responded with Scripture so Satan is wholly aware of Scripture he is an accumulation of knowledge which we do not have you know if you think about how we can do things today that our ancestors couldn't do the reason is not because we're smarter but it is because we have an accumulation of knowledge Satan has had a accumulation of knowledge which we can never have in our threescore and ten and if by reason of strength fourscore years he has an accumulation of knowledge over thousands and thousands of years and he knows the Bible exhaustively but sin by its very nature is irrational he has enmity helos God and the principles of God's kingdom and that by the way is progressive which is to say it is an increasing loathing of God and goodness and grace because as the imago Dei the image of God is is further tattered and torn and ultimately in hell completely eradicated sin becomes ever more intense and vicariously it becomes ever more irrational

Channel: Jon Oleksiuk

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Keywords: what is christianity, bible answer man, hank hanegraaff, christian research institute, spiritual warfare, christian teaching, hank hanegraaf, hank hanegraf, hank hanegraaff orthodox, hank hanegraaff interview, bible answer man hank hanegraaff, Bible answer man hank, hank the bible answer man, christianity, apologetics, hank unplugged podcast, bible answers, orthodox christianity, william lane craig, the bible answer man, bible answer man newtwork, christian research journal

Id: OO2vUNAyNDo

Length: 44min 36sec (2676 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 05 2018