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Hi Jodi,
So this beast, this old man, this unified carnal mind of mankind appears again?
Only in your imagination.
I used to wonder how God can be said in the OT to make the blind and deaf and mute and curse people with all manner of sickness and disease yet in the NT these things appear in most instances to be the work of the devil. And how can the earth be the Lord’s and the fullness thereof yet the devil has been given the kingdoms of this world and can tempt Jesus with them? If these temptations were simply Jesus carnal desires then why are they depicted in such a fanciful way?
Clearly Jesus didn’t disagree with the Pharisees on the existence of demons nor did Paul. When Jesus says to the Pharisees “If Satan cast out Satan then how can his kingdom stand?” Cannot the same be said about God if all these ailments come from him? If God cast out God then how can his kingdom stand? There were exorcists among the Jews and Gentiles before,during and after Jesus. But Jesus is certainly the most famous exorcist in the history of the world and the majority of people who practice exorcisms today are Christians.
When Jesus casts the “legion” into a herd of swine at their request begging not to be punished before the time is this somehow just sinful or insane thoughts being transferred into pigs? The whole story may well just be symbolical but it’s presented in such a way that it’s actual entities that cause the swine to plunge over the cliff to their death. And when Jesus heals the crippled woman in Luke 13 it’s said she was bound by a spirit for eighteen years and claims she’s a daughter of Abraham who’s been bound by Satan and has the right to be set free. Jesus makes her out to be a victim not of God or her own sins or faults but Satan.
In fact it was the Sadducees who denied the existence of angels,demons and the resurrection, and stuck mostly to the Torah and their priestly duties, not accepting the later developed theology. The book of Daniel which is the latest or last written of the OT canon presents an angel fighting against an angelic prince of Persia for twenty one days in order to answer Daniel’s prayers and even Michael joins in to help. And his prayer was for understanding the strange visions. This all just shows the evolution of a more dualistic theology of good vs evil which many theologies such as the Greeks and Persians already had.
Hi Andrew,
Yes Jesus revealed the truth.
Though saving his most pungent words for the Pharisees he agreed with them about the resurrections and the existence of angels and spirits. The Sadducees were shown to be quite deficient in their understandings. This ignorance was manipulated cleverly by Paul in Acts 23.6 f
Hi,
Matt 16..6f
And Jesus said to them
”Watch out and beware the leaven of the pharisees and Sadducees”
… then they understood that he did not say to beware of the leaven of bread, but of the teaching of the pharisees and sadducees.
Acts 23.8
For the sadducees say there is no resurrection, nor an angel nor a spirit…
Jodi also has missed some of the truth.
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