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The views and opinions expressed during this live stream do not necessarily represent the views of Framing the World. Individuals are invited to be interviewed for their unique perspective on specific topics and not because Framing the World agrees with or endorses all other areas of opinion. Listen or discretion is advised. The best con men in the world are not going to come at you looking like a creep. They're not going to be looking like a thug. They're not going to be looking outwardly as someone who's going to try to steal from you or hurt you or kill you. The greatest con man is going to be the one looking the sharpest, looking the cleanest, looking the smoothest, and the friendliest, and they're the wolf in sheep's clothing. Satan is the ultimate wolf in sheep's clothing. He's going to come to you looking like a great preacher, a great man of God, and that's how he's going to come to this world through the Antichrist. Satan's going to use the Antichrist to deceive the whole world, and it's not going to be a guy saying, hey, let's all worship Satan. Alright guys, well today's episode is going to be about guardian angels or cherubims or just angels. And so this is a topic that's very interesting to me, and it's a topic that I think a lot of people are confused about. I know when I was growing up, I guess I never really understood what angels were like. And it makes absolutely no sense that I wouldn't know what angels are like because they are mentioned some 300 times in the Bible. So you know, the Bible does give us a lot of, it gives us a lot, it tells us a lot about what angels are, you know, what they look like, what they're not. And so it should be an interesting conversation. We're going to be talking with Pastor David Birgens. He is the pastor of Stronghold Baptist Church just right outside of Atlanta, Georgia. And so if you live in the area, make sure to head over to his website strongholdbaptist.church. Again that's strongholdbaptist.church, and you can check out his address there. But he is right outside of Atlanta, right here. And so if you live anywhere in that region, make sure you guys head over to his church and support him. It's a great church over there in Atlanta. He's doing great things over in that part of the United States. And so I appreciate him coming on the program today to talk about this issue. I want to have a lot of conversations about topics that aren't really discussed too much. And I feel like the topic of angels is not discussed that much. And so I hopefully will learn something today. I know he preached a great sermon about this back in 2019 entitled Guardian Angels and Cherubs. And this is exactly what we're going to be talking about today. One of my favorite verses on this subject is Hebrews 13-2. And this is something I heard when I was young. And it always just made me wonder, like, have I ever ran into an angel? And you know, this verse right here, it says, Be not forgetful to entertain strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares. Now I know it says some. I probably haven't entertained any angels. But that is interesting that maybe you could theoretically entertain angels unawares. And that's what the Bible says. It's pretty interesting thought to think about that you could interact with angels. I mean, angels do exist. The Bible does talk about them. And so we are going to speculate a little bit on this show. But what I really wanted to do is just kind of go through the Bible and show what we know for sure angels are like and just talk about it. Because you know, angels are messengers. And so we're going to go through what the Bible talks about what angels are. We know that Satan was considered an angel or cherub, the Bible calls Satan. And we also know that angels are carried people into heaven. So that's another interesting thing. When you die, you're carried into heaven. So these are the things we're going to be talking about today on the program. Super interesting. So make sure you share this episode with your friends and family on your social media account. Make sure you check out our sponsors, the Romans Road app. The link will be in the description of this video where you can go and download that app. And also I appreciate those who have donated through our website and sponsored this show. We have raised some 3500 bucks for this show over the past year. And it doesn't seem like a lot but it's really been perfect. Just raise the amount of money that we need to buy the hard drives and do the basic stuff on this show. Obviously you want a little bit more, you'd love to upgrade some things for the show. But you know what, these people have sacrificed their hard earned money so we could come and do this show every week. And I really appreciate Rob Vitilano, the Toronto KJV Soul Winning School, Gerald Mackel, Timothy Richardson, Kimberly Gandera, Matt Powell, Bas Lawson, Michael and Leslie Beardsley, Clive Hagen, Sarah Wallace, Chad Demian, Josh Ludsford, Robert Kearney, Andrew Harms, Ethan Schmidt, Julio Feliz, Julio Guerrero, Samuel Elliott, and in memory of Timothy Caffone. I appreciate everyone for sponsoring this episode. If you want to donate to the program, just go to the description of this episode. You'll see a link where you can do that. But let's get right to today's conversation. I'm really excited to talk with Pastor Berjans about what he thinks about what angels are going to be like. Hopefully I ask him some tough questions at Stump'em but I haven't prepared much of anything for this episode so we'll see if I can come up with something on the fly. But anyways, let's do this guys. Pastor Berjans, how are you doing today sir? I'm doing well, thanks for asking, how are you doing? Good yeah, it's been a while since we talked. I think the last time we talked was, man, what was that? I don't even remember, it's been quite a while. I think we talked once on your show about COVID quite a while ago though. Yeah, so that was back in March. Back in March we talked, you were on the second episode. So now this is episode 102, so you're 100 episodes later. We got you back on. Awesome, exactly 100. Well, you know, there's a lot of misunderstanding about angels and I wanted to talk to you about kind of what the Bible says about what we know for sure is about angels and getting some speculation as well towards the end. But why is there so much misinformation about angels? Yeah, you know, I'm not sure. I think most of the misinformation probably comes from the Catholic Church. I mean, that's where you're going to, it's most common you're going to hear things about angels that are untrue, is mostly from people who are Catholic. I don't actually know why that is, I haven't studied enough on, you know, where the history of their doctrine on these things comes from. But you know, the Bible actually has a lot to say about angels, probably even more than most people would maybe even think, right? And not until you start really studying it out, sometimes you realize how much information there really is about angels. And you know, one of the things that I find most fascinating, I preached a sermon a year ago on angels and I think it's just a super interesting topic. And as a Bible believer, you know, there's an entire world happening around us. You know, we believe in angels and devils, we believe they're real creatures, but they're not really manifest visually unto us in general. Obviously there's exceptions within scripture, but we don't find that, you know, we know day to day that there's angels that could be around, but we don't see them physically and the Bible tells us a lot about them. I think that's one of the reasons why you have false doctrines too, is just because anything that's unseen leads to false doctrine, right? I think one of the biggest, well, I don't know, there's a lot of things, it's kind of a deep subject and the angel subject as a whole could go well beyond even the time that we're going to spend talking about it today. But I think what comes to most people's mind when you think about angels is you think about a creature, you know, most people I think think of what's known as a cherubim, right, or a cherub. And the Bible describes cherubs as having wings and they're these creatures that got created, they're not human beings, they're their own thing. But one of the things you have to realize when you read the Bible is that angels aren't always, it's not necessarily even referring to cherubs, so people can be referred to as an angel because an angel is literally like a messenger or messenger of God. And there's even an example where I believe that Jesus Christ is referred to as an angel and you can see, I actually had a conversation with someone once about when the Bible says the angel of the Lord, that there may be some times where that actually, that phrase is referring to Jesus Christ himself. But one instance that I'm real confident of is in Judges chapter 2, it's the first verse where the Bible says, and an angel of the Lord came up from Gilgal to Bochum and said, so this is the angel speaking, I made you to go up out of Egypt and have brought you unto the land which I swear unto your fathers. And I said, I will never break my covenant with you. So this is the first person speaking, we know that's the Lord, we know that the Lord made the children of Israel come up out of Egypt, we know that the Lord brought them into the land that was promised unto them and that the Lord made the covenant with them. So I believe that this is an Old Testament visit of Jesus Christ, it's referring to him as an angel, as a messenger of the Lord that came up and is speaking in the first person. Normally when you have a prophet, say Isaiah, Ezekiel, Jeremiah or whoever, they're going to say, thus saith the Lord, like God said this. But in this instance, it doesn't say, thus saith the Lord, it just says the angel said, hey, I did this. So to me, you know, there's one example at least, among others, where I believe even Jesus Christ himself or the Lord can be considered an angel. So there's also places where you have men can be called angels as well. The Bible talks about where people have entertained angels at unawares, right? Not knowing. Obviously, if you couldn't know if someone's an angel, it's not talking about a cherub with wings, because I think it'd be pretty obvious that you know if you're talking to someone and they've got these wings pointed out behind them that, well, this must not be a regular person, right? But so how else can you be unawares unless it was just they just looked exactly like another man? Yeah. So that that verse always just kind of it's hard to comprehend because it's like you always think about them having wings or you think about how the cartoons portray them as these little these little babies fooling around on puff balls or something, you know? So that is weird how it says, you know, that they you might entertain angels unawares. That's right. And the reason is because that an angel isn't referring to just one creature, right? And more importantly, I think it's the influence from either, you know, the artists because that's a lot of what we see today is just the paintings of people who are making paintings of what they consider to be angels or the engravings and all the architecture in the Roman Catholic Church where they have the baby faces with the wings and everyone refers to those as angels when they're really cherubim or, you know, cherubs which is not necessarily the same as an angel. I'm not saying that they couldn't act as an angel or, you know, be called an angel but there's more to the study of angels in the Bible than just assigning that specific creature to what an angel is. So now real quick, do you think that that Hebrews 13 passage when it says entertaining angels unawares, do you believe that that's just like a messenger or do you believe that it's an actual angel? Yeah, I think that's talking about like a messenger. What I think that's referring to is, you know, when it's talking about real visits. So like when Abraham was right before God destroyed Sodom in Genesis, what, Genesis 18, right, there's the three men came and they were going to walk by and Abraham stopped them and said, oh, sit down, let me make some food for you, you know, and it was being very hospitable towards them. At first, he didn't even realize any, you know, who they were. He was just helping these strangers on their way and we know that it was angels that entered into Sodom, right, because it was the angels that were getting lots out of Sodom before destroying it and again, that's another instance where I don't want to get too deep into that where I believe that the third person is another Old Testament appearance of the Lord Jesus Christ that was speaking with Abraham but the fact that he was there with angels, I don't think there's anything to lend, you know, any information saying that they had wings, right, that these creatures weren't these type of supernatural beings. They were literally just servants of the Lord that are angels because they're messengers of the Lord. Wow. And I think that's what Hebrews 13 is referring to, like that's one example. We also have the example of Manoah before the birth of Samson, right, in the book of Judges where the angel came to Manoah's wife and had said, you know, made the prophecy, you're going to have a child and said that, you know, you can't have anything of the vine and, you know, kind of gave the instructions on how the child was to be raised and they didn't realize that that was an angel until they made the offering. They were going to offer it to him and he said, no, you got to offer it to the Lord and if you remember, he went up in the smoke, like up to heaven or whatever. So they didn't realize at the time who exactly they were speaking with. They just thought it was a person. So there's clearly from that I can say, you can't say every mention of an angel is a creature with wings. Yeah. Just because how could you not know? Right? How could? Yeah. It's like they have that movie. There was that movie out a long time ago, John Travolta, I think it was, it was called Michael, right? Yep. And that movie, and I don't think I ever saw that movie. It's an old movie, but, you know, he had the big old wings and that's how people view angels, but it's just simply not a biblical view. We need to use scripture to define what these things are, what creatures are, and not go any further. And just because an angel might be able to send up in the smoke doesn't mean he has wings either. Right? You could just assume that, but it's not a good assumption, doesn't say it. Yeah. Well, they even talk about how angels bring us up into heaven, but... That's right. Yeah. That's right. It doesn't say they fly with their wings to carry us into heaven. Yeah. Right? So when we're caught up in heaven, we know that Elijah, when he was taken by, he was taken by a chariot into heaven, which I don't recall, I think I have notes here on that, but he wasn't, I don't think it says that if the angels were driving the chariots or not, but to me that seems like a relatively safe assumption that they were bringing him up to heaven, because it seems like every reference to people being taken to heaven is from the angels. We could look at Matthew 24 when it talks about the elect being gathered together, and it talks about the angels gathering together from the four corners of heaven, and in Revelation and other places, the taking people up to heaven is not something that a human does, and the Bible said that when it talked about Jesus Christ in John chapter 3, no man had ascended up into heaven, because no man is able to, of their own power, just make themselves go up to heaven, I believe, not just in the flesh, but also after you die. So your soul doesn't just automatically ascend up by itself. I believe that God sends his angels to bring you to heaven, to bring your soul to heaven after you die, right? After you pass away physically on this earth as a believer, the angels will come and take you to heaven, and by the many instances we see that happening, or the references, I should say, to angels taking people up, and it makes sense too, right? I mean, it kind of makes sense that you have that mechanism for entrance into heaven where God is commanding his angels, okay, this soul, this soul, this, you know, whoever, to come and take him into heaven, because God knows who's saved and who isn't. Yeah. Well, you know, that is very interesting to think about, that the second you die, you might wake up and see an angel and go right up into heaven. That is a fascinating, fascinating thought. One of the things I think most people don't really understand either, or grasp, is that Satan is actually an angel, and that he's beautiful, and can you explain how Satan, you know, was just like all the other angels? Sure, and this is, there's a lot of doctrines that get impacted by this too. I don't know how deep I want to go into that either, but you know, there's a lot of people who think that the sons of God are referring to angels. Well, if Satan is referred to as, he's definitely, he's referred to as a cherub, right, or oftentimes you know him as a fallen angel, right, which if a son of God is considered to be an angel, which I don't believe it is, I don't hold to that doctrine or that understanding. When the Bible talks about sons of God, I believe it's always referring to a believer, it's always referring to someone who's put their faith, a human being has put their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, but what that does then is it makes you brethren with Satan. It makes, you know, it just makes a son of God a brother to the devil, right? If you think about that, and that's a pretty bizarre end, or you know, where that leads to when you start to think that, oh, when the Bible says sons of God, it's talking about angels, well, now you're saying a son of God is going to be like a brother with the devil, or in kin with, right? And that seems kind of odd, but the passage you're referring to is in Ezekiel 28 where we get a lot of information about the devil being referred to as a cherub, so it says he's a fallen cherub. I want to start reading in verse number 12, because there's a lot of information here even about that. The Bible says, Son of man, take up a lamentation upon the king of Tyrus and say unto him, Thus saith the Lord God, thou sealest up the sum full of wisdom and perfect in beauty. And we see the address being made the king of Tyrus, but as it goes on, we start to get the real understanding of who he's referring to, that he's not just referring to the physical king. He's talking to the dark power in high places that's who's really in charge and who's really influencing the physical king of Tyrus, because verse 13 says, Thou hast been in Eden, the garden of God. And we know that the physical king at that time obviously couldn't have been in the garden of God in Eden, right? So this is referring to another creature. And as we continue to read, we're going to see that this is referring to Satan. It says, Thou hast been in Eden, the garden of God. Every precious stone was thy covering, the sardius, topaz, the diamond, the beryl, the onyx, the jasper, sapphire, the emerald, the carbuncle, and gold. The workmanship of thy tabrets and of thy pipes was prepared in the day that thou was created. So from this description, these stones are very beautiful stones. These are stones that God uses to beautify the new Jerusalem. It's obvious it's a very ornate creature. So God created this creature to be a very outwardly beautiful creature, as well as it talks about the tabrets and the pipes referring to, I would think, the vocal, the sound that's going to be produced by this creature is going to be one that God took care, and there's this crafty workmanship that's done to make that sound also beautiful the same way that his outward appearance would be, which completely destroys the concept of Satan being this pitchfork-holding, horns, red, the way that you were talking about before, like a cartoon might picture the devil. That's not the way that God made him, and he didn't turn into such a creature after he sinned either. He continues to look the same way, the same way that all of us do, the way we were created, even after you get saved. You're unsaved, you get saved. There's no change in your flesh. There's no change in the way that you appear outwardly to anybody. How God made you is the way that you continue to be. But then verse 14 there, it says, Thou art the anointed cherub that covereth, and I have set thee so. Thou wast upon the holy mountain of God, thou wast walked up and down in the midst of the stones of fire. So anointed, he was a chosen, he was this cherub that God also exalted and had lifted up, right? He's someone that he was set up in a high position. Verse 15 says, Thou wast perfect in thy ways from the day that thou wast created till iniquity was found in thee. That's the key, that hey, everything was great until he sinned, until iniquity was found. Verse 16 says, By the multitude of thy merchandise they have filled the midst of thee with violence, and thou hast sinned. Therefore, I will cast thee as profane out of the mountain of God, and I will destroy thee, O covering cherub, from the midst of the stones of fire. Thine heart was lifted up because of thy beauty. Thou hast corrupted thy wisdom by reason of thy brightness. I will cast thee to the ground. I will lay thee before kings, that they may behold thee. So the problem that Satan had was that he was lifted up with pride, and he was lifted up with pride because of just some vain things, just overall his beauty and the way that God made him. That went to his head into thinking that he was something more than he really was. And obviously, he wants to usurp the authority of God. I'm going to keep reading here. Verse number 18 says, Thou wast defiled by sanctuaries by the multitude of thine iniquities. By the iniquity of thy traffic, therefore will I bring forth a fire from the midst of thee. It shall devour thee, and I will bring thee to ashes upon the earth in the sight of all them that behold thee. All they that know thee among the people shall be astonished at thee. Thou shalt be a terror, and never shalt thou be any more. Ultimately, one day, Satan is going to be destroyed. He's going to be cast into the lake of fire where the beast and the false prophet are, and he's going to be tortured and tormented there forever and ever. And Ezekiel's very prophetic, so there's kind of a couple things going on there. It's definitely bringing forth a judgment against Tyre and the king of Tyrus, but then it also brings up the anointed cherub, the covering cherub that is referring to Satan, because we know that Satan was in the Garden of Eden as well with Adam and Eve when he appeared to them as a serpent and got them to commit sin. Yeah, well it makes total sense that Satan isn't this devil with the pitchfork and stuff because it makes sense that he can do much more damage by looking beautiful and deceiving people and stuff like that. So it does make total sense that he- Well of course, and it's also backed up by other scriptures that say that, not to be surprised, that basically the ministers of Satan are going to appear as an angel of light, right? That the Bible says in 2 Corinthians 11 that Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light. So you think of an angel, you think of light, you think of good things. The best con men in the world are not going to come at you looking like a creep, they're not going to be looking like a thug, they're not going to be looking outwardly as someone who's going to try to steal from you or hurt you or kill you. The greatest con man is going to be the one looking the sharpest, looking the cleanest, looking the smoothest, and the friendliest, and the wolf in sheep's clothing. So Satan is the ultimate wolf in sheep's clothing. He's going to come to you looking like a great preacher, a great man of God, and that's how he's going to come to this world through the antichrist, Satan's going to use the antichrist to deceive the whole world. It's not going to be a guy saying, hey, let's all worship Satan, that's not how he's going to get everyone to follow him. He's going to bring the message of peace, he's going to say, hey, we're going to get rid of all these wars, we're going to- everything's going to be great, we're all going to get along, there's going to be peace in the Middle East, all the things that you've been wanting to have that hasn't happened, I'm going to solve all your problems for you. Just take this mark, buy into the new world order, and bow down and worship. There's going to be lying signs and wonders and these miracles performed to try to convince people that he is God. Like I said, he's not going to come looking so obvious with a pitchfork, he's going to be coming trying to look what people at least have in their minds as someone who's going to be holy and righteous and good. Otherwise, how would you deceive so many people? The Bible talks about there being a hundred million angels, can you talk about that? The Bible gives the exact- I don't want to say the exact number, but what was the- Revelation 5-11. That's it, Revelation, right? Yeah, Revelation 5-11. In Revelation 5 it talks about, I beheld and I heard the voice of many angels round about the throne and the beasts and the elders and the number of them was ten thousand times ten thousand and thousands of thousands. So ten thousand times ten thousand is a hundred million, right? So that's a lot, that's a lot of creatures, that's a lot of angels and that's clearly, so it's a hundred plus million because thousands of thousands are going to be millions as well, right? So you've got over a hundred million angels and the reason for that, and I think it's cool that the Bible even tells us that. I think that's super neat that the Bible just gives us a number like that, but it also makes sense when the concept of having a guardian angel, a lot of people like that and that may be taken a little too extreme in many cases, but it's not really far off from the truth either because the Bible tells us first of all that angels were basically created as ministers for us, they're ministering spirits and all throughout the Bible you're going to see angels, their job is helping humans and helping people. That even though they're greater in power and in might, the way that God created them, that we are like I guess lower than the angels, that they were created to be ministers and ministering spirits unto us. So in Matthew 18 is the key verse where you could get the concept of having a guardian angel, an angel that's going to take guard over you. Matthew 18 verse number 10, the Bible reads, take heed that you despise not one of these little ones, for I say unto you that in heaven their angels, who's there? Well one of these little ones, right? Their angels do always behold the face of my Father which is in heaven. So apparently Jesus is explaining here that the little ones have angels to watch over and protect them and say don't despise them because their guardian angel is there to protect them. We also see examples when the disciples were being persecuted and being cast into prison. There's that story in the book of Acts where Peter was brought forth of the angel out of prison. So this is another example of an angel going to help, to protect, to kind of be a guardian angel for him and to help him out in his time of need, to come and minister unto him where, you know, he goes in and Peter thinks he's dreaming, right? And he's locked in like the innermost prison and, you know, he's sleeping between two guards and the angel is just able to make the shackles come up, open up the doors and just lead him out of the prison and do all those things to help Peter and then of course the angel just ends up disappearing. The angel is also ministered unto Jesus Christ. Do you think about when Jesus was in his hardest times of trouble in the Garden of Gethsemane? I've got some notes here from when I knew we were going to do this conversation and in the book of Luke when Jesus goes to the Mount of Olives, in Luke 22, the Bible says, And when he was at the place, he said unto them, Pray that ye enter not into temptation. He was withdrawn from them about a stone's cast, and he kneeled down and prayed, saying, Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me, nevertheless, not my will but thine be done. This is right before he's about to be crucified, right? So he's facing this great event that's not going to be pleasant for him at all. He knows what he's facing. He knows what he's about to do. He knows he's going to be mocked and beaten and have to endure the death, and he knows he has to endure the death of the cross. He has full knowledge of this at this point in his life, and he's not looking forward to it. Let's put it that way. Now, obviously, he's going to do what he needs to do. He's without sin, but anybody put in that situation, I don't think he'd be looking forward to doing that. As he's going through this really difficult time, in verse 43, the Bible says, And there appeared an angel unto him from heaven, strengthening him. So he's being strengthened by an angel. It's one of the angel's jobs is to strengthen him. He was also strengthened by angels when he was out in the wilderness, and he was fasting for those 40 days, and Satan came to tempt him. It's another example of that. Then, even when they came to arrest Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, and Peter took up the sword, and he told him basically to stand down because this needs to happen. He says, I could ask my father in heaven, and he'd give me 12 legions of angels. The angel's job is to protect. The concept of having guardian angels is a scriptural one, is a biblical one. There's so many times where angels being sent to help people out, not just Jesus Christ, but other people too, like Daniel in the lion's den. The only reason why Daniel wasn't devoured by those lions is because God sent an angel. Daniel 622 is the proof of that. Daniel 622 says, My God hath sent his angel, and hath shut the lions' mouths, that they have not hurt me. So this isn't guesswork, this isn't thinking, oh, well, that's probably what he did. I mean, it's literally what the scripture says, is that an angel was sent to do that. Because we know that after Daniel was released, then they threw in his accusers and their families, and the angels, or I mean, excuse me, the lions completely devoured them. They were just eaten up. We know that the lions were hungry. We know that they were ready to feast. The only thing that saved Daniel was that he had a guardian angel there helping him out and keeping the lions' mouths shut, so they wouldn't kill him and devour him, and on and on. Like I said, there's so many examples in the scripture. Even Balaam was protected from his ass by an angel lord that was about to kill him. So angels come to do the will of the lord, they're going to be protecting his people, I believe that Balaam was a false prophet. He's referred to in the book of Jude in 2 Peter as, in the chapters that deal with false prophets, he was an enchanter, he did a lot of bad things, and he also caused a stumbling block and caused Israel to sin. He loved the wages of unrighteousness, so he wasn't a good guy, even though he says some things that sound good, just like Satan is an angel of light. He may look good and sound good sometimes, but he's still not a good guy. So, yeah, there's so many examples of angels protecting people, I think, that's a really interesting thing, and actually understanding that point, there's many places especially in the book of Psalms, I'm going through the book of Psalms right now in our Wednesday night Bible study, and it's a really encouraging book. It's a book that many Christians turn to when they have problems in their life because of all of the promises that God gives us of being our defender, being our help, being our shield, being our buckler, being someone you can turn to in your times of trouble. It's amazing when you read about how God knows, you know, he knows the number of hairs on our head, he considers all of our thoughts and hears our prayers, and you know, who are we, right? We're one of billions in this earth, every individual person. God knows all of their thoughts, he knows everything about them, and God cares about us. God definitely cares about his people and loves us, and besides all of those other encouraging scriptures, just thinking about how God has another creature, another creation that he's made to minister unto us in our times of trouble, and to be able to help us out of seemingly impossible situations. We think of Elisha and Gehazi, right, when he was being hunted down, and there was, you know, the legions of angels that were surrounding the man of God, and protecting him when it's like you have a whole army of people against you, and it doesn't matter what the odds are, because God has his angels also to protect us, and he uses his angels to do so, and so going back to where we kind of started off, where we brought up the number, you know, over a hundred million angels, it makes sense, well if there's that many angels, yeah it makes sense, I mean how many people are really saved in the world? I don't think the angels are just protecting every single human being in the world. I think they were made to help God's people, right, to watch over and protect those who are saved, and we know that there's few that are saved, Jesus Christ answered that question, that there's not, you know, there's many that are deceived, there's many that go through the broadway and the broad gate that leads unto destruction and unto death, because there's few that enter into the straight gate, and you know, having over a hundred million angels, there's a lot of angels to be able to look out and help and protect and help us in our times of need, so that's pretty cool, I mean there's a lot of things, there's some things I even learned in preparing for this sermon that I preached just because I hadn't dug extremely deep into it, but when you do the study on it, it's actually really exciting. Yeah, yeah, you know what, it would be, I would love it if you read that second King's passage, because I find that story so fascinating. Sure, sure, let me get there real quick. I know I gotta have my notes, I have a lot of notes, I shared them with you, and you can see how many notes that there are in general, and this is still, in my opinion, still scratching the surface. So in 2 Kings 6.15, about a reason, when the servant of the man of God was risen early, and gone forth, behold, and host, compassed the city both with horses and chariots, and his servant said unto him, Alas, my master, how shall we do? And he answered, Fear not, for they that be with us are more than they that be with them. So Elisha and his servant, they're surrounded by this host, by this army. It says they have horses, they've got chariots, I mean, in today's world, you imagine tanks are showing up, you've got all these soldiers, and these people just have you surrounded. And you're just thinking, well, what in the world are we possibly gonna do? What's cool about this story is that Elisha, I don't think Elisha physically was able to see the angels. I think he just had the faith, and knew that they were there, and knew that God was protecting him, and knew that God has angels to protect us. That's my personal opinion on this, but either way, what he does is he prays to the Lord to open up his eyes, because his servant couldn't see them. He couldn't physically see that there was angels protecting them, yet they were all still there. And I think that that happens today in many cases. You know, there's a lot of people I've talked to, and even me personally, I think there's been a lot of examples of things. You might be able to think about times in your life where you've had really, really close calls, or maybe a near-death experience, or where something happened, and it almost seems like there's no way that's a coincidence that I could have made it out of that. Or, you know, people have some really extreme things happen, you know, motorcycle accidents that somehow they end up just walking away and being unscathed, and situations like that. Now, I don't think there's any way we can necessarily know when an angel does get involved, but I think there's enough instances like that to say there's definitely something else going on. And obviously, as a believer, we've got the Bible that tells us that these angels are there to help and protect. And this story is no different, because they're surrounded, and even though they can't physically see them, Elisha's servant couldn't physically see them until God opened up his eyes. And once God opened up his eyes, the Bible says, And the Lord opened the eyes of the young man, and he saw and behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha. And this kind of lends back to my point about the chariots of fire that took Elijah up in a whirlwind to heaven. Well, here we see the angels and the chariots of fire surrounding them to protect them. So, to me, it just kind of makes sense that the angels would take people to heaven. But yeah, they're fully protected here. Elisha has no doubts or no worry about his safety. And I believe when you're doing the will of God, especially when you're doing work for the Lord, no one needs to fear or worry about your safety. I've had people, family members and friends, and people who are concerned for me and for my family, and have good intentions and well-meaning. You know, when I've told them about soul winning and going out knocking on doors, and going to certain neighborhoods, right, because we go everywhere, right? We have to preach the gospel to everybody. And we actually target the poor first. We like trying to reach the poor people. They're the most humble. They tend to be the most receptive. And it's a biblical concept to go and seek out the poor. So, we go into these neighborhoods, but they're not the best of neighborhoods. They're high crime areas. There's a lot of things going on. But see, that doesn't bother me. That never worries me. And people say, oh, well, do you carry a gun? Do you carry a weapon? You know, in general, I do, but not for the purposes of me fearing for soul winning. When I go soul winning, I don't think, oh, I need to get my gun, right? I'm not worried about that in the slightest. Because when I'm out doing work for the Lord, whether I have a gun or not, God is able to protect me. God has angels that can go forth before me and make sure that we are kept safe. And my gun is going to be meaningless. I mean, did Elisha need a gun when he's surrounded by these armies? Of course not. It wouldn't have even done anything. God's angels were protecting him, and we need to trust in the Lord. That's a concept that's brought up over and over and over again in Scripture on just trusting God and fearing not, and that the only biblical fear is a fear of the Lord. That we don't need to fear what man can do unto us. It's not about the physical weapons and the fight. God's already taken care of us. If we're going to go forth in a spiritual battle and go forth and try to win people to Christ, well, God's going to give us his ministering spirits to help us in that endeavor and to help protect us even from physical evil and harm. Right. Well, you know, it's amazing to read that story about Elisha and think about it because, I mean, that young man did see it. If Elijah didn't see it, that young man saw all those armies and the hosts and the fire, and just what an amazing sight. What a sight to behold, right? That would be amazing to see those things. But we have to take things on faith, right? We can't expect to just have all of our eyes open to these things. But how cool is that? I mean, for all I know right now, I've got an angel standing outside my front door. I don't know, but we know that they're out there somewhere. There's over 100 million of them that God is using for his purpose, and I guarantee you he's using them to protect some believers right now. For sure. I grew up in a missionary home, and I remember hearing story after story of just these miraculous things that happened to missionaries overseas on how they were spared. My parents told me a lot of stories that happened to them, things that you wouldn't survive. You can just always just attest to God's hand in doing that and saying that. What's cool with the angels is that that also gives us a little insight into how God does things because obviously, of course, we believe that God is all powerful, right? God was able to speak everything into existence. He doesn't have to exert any energy, and whatever God wills, he can make happen. We know that to be true. However, the Bible teaches us a little bit about God and his character and that God actually uses his creation to do things that he wants done more so I would say than direct involvement, right? The Bible says that God has committed unto us the ministry of reconciliation, that it is the job of the believer of human beings to go forth and yoke up with the Holy Spirit and preach the gospel of Jesus Christ unto the lost so that they would be saved. He's not just speaking audibly to all these unbelievers and giving them the gospel so that they could get saved. He's given that job to us, and I think it's similar to how the angels work and help protect us as well. Ultimately, God is the one who's giving the orders, God is the one who's sending them, but they're the ones that are actually helping us when we're praying to God. God's answering by sending an angel. In fact, there was a passage, I don't know if it was even in these notes, when you interviewed me for Babylon USA, there was the... Yeah, how it took 21 days. I was in Daniel, right? Daniel. Yeah. Yes. It took 21 days. Because Daniel was praying unto God. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right? Daniel was praying unto God and praying for understanding, and God sent an angel to answer his prayer, but he was held up by another one of the... By the prince of Persia. There was a spiritual battle going on. I'm sorry? By the prince of Persia, right? Prince of Persia, exactly. Yeah. Prince of Persia. And he's like, I would have got here sooner, but the prince of... There was this battle and there was a prince of Persia held me up. So I think there's another great example of how God's working and he's using his angels. Now, God could have snapped his fingers, so to speak, right? Or transported somebody if he wanted to. We're not saying God's not powerful to do that, but he chooses to do things a certain way, right? And I think he chooses to use the angels to minister on us, and that's what the scripture says. So it's neat getting that insight, and in our human minds I think helps us understand how a lot of the impossible things are possible knowing that there's these other creatures around us that we can't see. Yeah. Yet they're still there. Yeah, and angels aren't omnipresent. They're not like God. That's right. They travel and they don't see everything. So maybe you could talk about that. Yeah, well, yeah. I mean, they're not God. That's a great point. And neither is Satan, right? So Satan is created as an angel, but he's not God. He's not everywhere at once. Everyone likes to use the, well, the devil made me do it, right? That's the fallback on why everybody sins. But honestly, Satan is not everywhere, first of all. So he's not able to just, like it's not always Satan himself talking in your ear to get you to sin, right? Our bodies will lust after sin. You don't have to have necessarily any help from anyone else. It doesn't mean that there's not devils and there's not Satan out there deceiving people and causing people to get into sin. I'm not saying he's not doing that, but every single individual that thinks, oh, Satan is, you know, it's like, well, no, it may not be Satan, right? Because he's not everywhere at once. He's probably going to be focusing most of his efforts on the people who are doing the most for the Lord. Because why would, you know, the number one adversary have to worry about every single individual human being? There's other devils that he can send to plague people with, but yeah, he's not everywhere. But at the same time, you know, the angels that would be like a guardian angel also, they're not everywhere at once either. They're not omnipresent. There is a number of them, and we saw that that number is 100 million plus, but that is a finite number. They're created beings, they're creatures, and they can't be everywhere at the same time, which also allows for bad things to happen, right? If there's a lot of wickedness going on and a lot of evil, you know, we know that there's no guarantee on our life. We know that God is our protector and defender, but we also know that there's wicked people that do things, and you know, God's given us a will. I don't want to get too far down that rabbit trail, but yeah, just the fact that these angels are, they're finite and they can't be everywhere at once, they go, I'm assuming, at God's direction, you know, who he wants to have. And God's listening to our prayers too. I think that's also why it's important for us, even though we know God knows everything, it's important to pray to God that, you know, Jesus said, I mentioned this already, that he could call the Father, call the Father, and the Father would send him, you know, 12 legions of angels, like he would do that if all he had to do was ask. And one of the things I think that Christians ought to keep in mind, believers ought to keep in mind, is that, hey, when you're having problems, you know, maybe a solution to your problem would be to ask God to send an angel to help you. Because that's what they're there for, they're ministering spirits. And I think it'd be great to ask specifically even, you know, hey, God, we're going into an area that we know is really dangerous, we know that is hostile, we know that can cause us problems, can you please send angels to protect us and to see our way through? I mean, my mind is already being flooded with other stories in scripture where God has kept people safe in their travels when the temple was being rebuilt in Jerusalem, you remember, and the king was sending them off with these goods, and also offered to provide them protection, that protection was refused. They said, no, our Lord God will take care of us. And the way they could have been robbed, they could have had other things happen to them, but you know what, God protected them, and I don't remember in that example if it specifically says that God sent his angels to protect them or not, but it lines up with everything else that that's how God would protect them is because they had their faith that God likes to see that and will answer their prayer to have the safe travels by sending his angels to make sure that they're not messed with. And there's so many other, I mean, there's so many examples of things like that happening in scripture that it's just really an awesome thing, a really cool thing to kind of meditate on and think about. Yeah. Yeah, this whole conversation is very interesting. You know, another thing that the Bible says that hell was prepared for the devil and his angels, so we not only have good angels, but we have bad angels. Now, what is the difference, Pastor, between demons and the bad angels? What is the difference between that? I don't think there is a difference. I think they're one and the same. I think that, you know, demons is probably the common word that most people use to describe the same thing. I use the word devil not just like the devil, like Satan, but for, you know, for King James Bible readers, that's the word that's used. Talk about devils, people being possessed with devils, people having, you know, problems with devils. You call them demons, but that those are the angels which had sinned. Those are the angels which rebelled against the Lord that, you know, maybe were deceived by Satan also and decided to follow Him and for whatever reason didn't, you know, didn't like their first estate. They didn't keep their first estate. Now they're reserved in chains of judgment, in chains of darkness under the day of judgment, right? So we know that Satan sinned prior to man's sin, that Satan was already deceiving man in the Garden of Eden, right? So Satan lost his position prior to the fall of man. And there's a lot of things, you know, some things we simply don't know, but we do know from Revelation, and it talks about the, you know, the beast dragging, you know, a third of the stars, that I think that that's referring to, you know, because the stars are also symbolic of angels and it also talks about the host of heaven and that Satan deceives, you know, a third of the angels to follow him. And I think that's already been done and I think that's why there's devils and that's why, you know, he has his own workers of iniquity that are doing his work and hurting mankind instead of helping mankind, right, since the angels' job was to be a minister. The Bible, and actually I'm going to read this passage in Hebrews 1 because this is a really important passage about the angels and it defines there how they were made ministers. I keep on bringing that point up. I don't think I referenced the scripture though. I might have just kind of stated it, but Hebrews 1, 1, the Bible says, God who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds, who being the brightness of his glory and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the majesty on high, verse 4 says, being made so much better than the angels, as he hath by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than nay. So this is drawing now a very clear distinction between the physical creature, the creation of an angel, versus the, well, Jesus isn't a creation, but as the Son of God, he has obtained a more excellent name than nay by inheritance, because, you know, sons inherit things from fathers, and how much better Jesus Christ is than any angels. And then it goes on in verse 5 to say, for unto which of the angels said he at any time, thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee, which to me, it's a great verse illustrating that the angels are not sons of God in any sense of the term, other than maybe if someone wants to say, any creature created of God is a son of God, that's silliness to me, because then you can say, oh, well, my dog is a son of God, this cow is a son of God, you know, because they're creatures, because they're a creation. It doesn't make sense, right? And people want to extrapolate, like, oh, well, Adam was the son of God because he was formed literally out of the earth. Yeah, he was formed out of the earth, but he was also believed in the Lord, too, right? So, anyhow, I don't want to go too far down that, but this, Hebrews 1, because there's more that I want to get to here in Hebrews 1, it's making a distinction between Jesus Christ and the angels, obviously a clear distinction. This day, you know, he's never said unto the angels, thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee, never, never, otherwise they wouldn't ask the question like this, right? So it's kind of a rhetorical question, and again, I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son. And again, when he bringeth in the first begotten into the world, he saith, and let all the angels of God worship him. Verse 7 says, and of the angels, now he was just talking about Jesus Christ, he was talking about the Son of God, and now he's talking about the angels. And of the angels, he saith, who maketh his angels spirits, and his ministers a flame of fire. So here we see that angels, that the angels that God's referring to here are spirits, right? And that's why Elisha's servant couldn't see them, because they're spirits, and that their ministers, it says, and his ministers a flame of fire. And it goes on and it says, you know, but unto the Son he saith, Thy throne of God is forever and ever, accepted of righteousness, accepted of Thy kingdom, and continues to talk about Jesus Christ, but then if you jump down to like verse 13, again he brings up angels, he says, but to which of the angels said he at any time, sit on my right hand until I make thine enemies thy footstool. Are they not all ministering spirits sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation? So that's where we get the clear statement, saying, I mean obviously it's in question form here, but he's again asking the question, rhetorically making the claim that this is what's happened. They are all ministering spirits, that the angels were created to be ministers, you're serving someone else, and who are they sent forth to minister? They're sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation. That's talking about every believer in the Lord Jesus Christ. We are joint heirs together with the Son of God through our faith in him, that we are adopted spiritually into God's family, when we're born again we become a child of God ourselves, and we share in that inheritance that we are heirs of salvation, and God sent forth his ministering spirits to minister essentially unto us. So this passage really, really spells that out. Going into this, I forgot how we got onto this, because you're asking a question, or making a point that, you remember? I just talked way too long now. No, no. I forget, I forget honestly. Yeah, yeah. It's easy to go from one point to the next, especially when we're just looking at the scripture, and there's so much information about the angels, and it really is an interesting topic. Well, one of the things that's interesting about that is it talks about how they're not given to marriage, angels are not married nor given to marriage, because they don't need to procreate. They are not like humans, they don't really die, right? That's true, yeah. Just like Satan, he's a created being, all of them are created beings, but he was around, and we don't know. Another interesting thing that we don't know is that when were angels created in the creation? I don't know. Genesis doesn't spell out when the angels were created, but we know it had to be at some point during the creation, because that's when everything was made that was made. At some point during that week, he made angels. I would venture to say it would be on the sixth day, when God made man, that he made angels, too. That would be reasonable to expect, but again, I don't know that, just because the Bible doesn't say specifically, but you bring up a good point, though, about that they're not procreators. There's a lot of weird doctrines out there that talk about the devils and angels, like the hybrid human theory of giants coming from these angels who laid with women from a misunderstanding of Genesis 6. It's like Jesus said, have you not read? The passage that you were just bringing up, that they're like the angels in heaven. They neither marry nor are given in marriage, yet you think that they're marrying and taking wives in Genesis 6? He didn't make them to procreate. We don't even know if they have, they probably don't have, I would assume, they don't have the capability of procreating. There's no reason to, so why would God? That's right. They're not made like man either in the sense that, it appears to me that angels don't have a savior. Like we do. People like to bring up in James that the devils also believe, that try to refute easy believism, that we believe that all you have to do to be saved is to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. Or say, the angels believe, the devils believe, excuse me, the devils believe, so are they saved? Well, they don't have the same salvation plan that we do. The Bible is very specific about human beings and it's directed for human beings. It's given to us, we have a savior in Jesus Christ, that's clear, but the Bible doesn't tell us anything about his other creation having any form of salvation. As far as I know, the devil and his angels, that's what hell was created for originally. So we know that they are deserving of that and God made that judgment without giving them a means of salvation. That's why they're reserved and they're changed. Basically, they must have had enough knowledge or whatever, because we're saved by faith. We're saved by believing in things that are not seen. So I think God gives us more grace and gave us the opportunity to be saved because we don't see the things like the angels see. I mean, angels are able to go before the throne of God. They don't need faith, they see God and they still were deliberately disobedient unto God in sin. Therefore, I mean, what are they gonna, they're gonna have faith in some, you know what I mean? They can't achieve any salvation. So believing in God, of course the devil is believing God. They've seen him. They've gone before the throne of God. It would be silly to say that they don't believe, right? But of course that also doesn't make them saved because their transgression sends them to hell. Jesus didn't become an angel and died for the sins of the angels. Jesus became a man, right? The word was made flesh, the flesh of a human being, not the flesh of angels. And we know, again, clearly that there's a difference between the flesh of a man and the flesh of these other created beings that are referred to as angels oftentimes in the Bible. Yeah, and angels must know that they're gonna go to hell someday because it says, you know, the Bible says, art thou come to torment us before the time? Yeah, torment before the time, that's right. All those devils that were possessing people, right, in Jesus' day as he's casting out devils, they knew what their end, they know what their end is. They know they're damned. And they know it's not, and we know it's not yet. That's evident that they haven't been sent to hell yet. They haven't been judged yet because it's not time for that yet, that God's allowing them to continue. Just like God allows Satan to travel back and forth between earth and heaven, as we see in Job, right? Job 1 and 2, Satan is having a conversation with the Lord about Job. And he asks him, where have you been? And he says, oh, from going up and down, to and fro throughout the earth, right? That's what Satan's doing. And that's kind of another area that gets impacted by the concept of devils and angels, but that Satan hasn't been cast out of heaven yet. I believe he still has access to heaven because once he gets kicked out, finally, that's when he's gonna wage his war against the believers and really start persecuting because he knows he has but a short time at that point. But again, I don't want to get too far off into the tribulation and everything else. It might be out of the scope of this conversation. Well, there must be a hierarchy of angels because the Bible talks about Satan being that beautiful cherubim, and he was lifted up. Yeah, he was the anointed angel, right? So he had a position. We also know that Michael's an archangel too, right? So an archangel puts him at a higher status above other angels. And I think, you know, and this just seems to make sense with the way that God even made human beings. So if we look at angels, they might be the closest creation to a human being that God has created. They can talk and communicate and think and kind of carry out other actions that other creatures don't do or can't do the same way. And we know that believers aren't all going to have the same rewards or the same status in heaven or on earth when, you know, when Jesus Christ sets up his kingdom here on earth, everyone isn't all going to be in the same exact, have the same exact status. It's going to be based on your works that you've done here. Judgment seat of Christ, right? Perfect example. God's going to give rewards to those who, you know, based on their works and whatever abides the fire, that's what they're going to get. And some people, you know, everything's going to be burned up, yet they themselves shall be saved, that their soul is saved. They'll still have entrance into the kingdom, but they're not going to have anything else to show for it. Right? So the same, I would say similarly, the way that human beings are like that, I think angels kind of can carry that same thing. You've got angels that maybe do more work for the Lord or, you know, serve him better, can be in a higher position than other angels. But when we start getting into that, you know, there's only like, you know, maybe one or two verses that you can kind of look to, to lead us in that direction. It's obviously a lot of speculation at this point, yeah. It would make sense with, you know, with how God uses people and interacts, but it's, you know, it lends itself to, okay, well, I don't really know the answer to that. And, you know, we ought to try to be careful in general, too, because that's where a lot of the false ideas come, even just on angels, you know, kind of where we started off the conversation with, how I think a lot of the people's visions of what angels even look like can stem from misunderstandings in Scripture or even just applying things that may not, you know, that may not be true, but, you know, we need to just stay focused on what does the Bible actually say? What can we prove? And then, you know, it's not like it's wrong to speculate, but I wouldn't go around just saying, oh, this is, you know. Yeah, be dogmatic about, yeah, these things. Yeah, for sure. One of the things that kind of puzzles me is like when the demons were cast out, remember when the sufferer has to go into the herd of swine, he cast them into the swine. The swine ran off the steep, you know, hill face into the sea. Into the ocean. Why did they, why did they have to be cast in? Like, I don't understand. Like, couldn't they just gone somewhere else? Or like, it just seems like, do they have to be in a body or in a, it's weird. I don't, do you understand? Yeah, you know, I don't know that, but I think, and I'd have to look it up. I know it's in Mark. I'd have to look up the reference, but didn't they say like, suffer us or will you allow us? Yeah, allow us. To go into the herd of swine, right? Since Jesus is the one casting them out, I think they're pleading just, hey, can you at least, you know, cast us into that herd of swine? Yeah. I don't know what the alternative would be. Like when we see Jesus casting out devils, where do they go? Yeah, do they go to hell? I don't know. I mean, where do they go? Do they just have to depart from possessing a human being and then they're just kind of like stumble on the ground even though we can't see it because they're some, you know, a spiritual being and then they just go on their way? I don't know. Honestly, that's something that is a great question and something to ponder, but I couldn't answer how that would work because my understanding is that they seem to be capable of possessing human bodies but not having to be in a human body here, right? Like, I mean, the angels were able to do that that were defending Elisha. They weren't inhabiting human bodies. Yeah. And the devils are angels. I mean, they'd be like, they would have all the same characteristics physically speaking or spiritually speaking as the other angels would have, right? So they're the same creature. Yeah. So they would also be capable of existing outside of a human body. I don't know why they would want to be cast into the herd of swine from their perspective. It's just such a weird, yeah. It's kind of weird, but, you know, obviously everything in the Bible is there for a reason. Maybe it was, you know, that God wanted that to happen to teach us other things about that story, you know, in the Word of God. And maybe that's it. Maybe trying to look too deep into it on why they would want to is misdirected because the whole purpose of that happening could have been just so that it's in the Word of God so that God can teach us other truths through that story, right? I mean, that's a possibility too. Yeah. Well, it's hard to say. I mean, when you start getting into that spectrum, like, why would they, I don't know. We know that they wouldn't have to inhabit anything just based on the other evidence of angels, right? Yeah. Of angels not having to inhabit a body. And even Satan, you know, the Bible says that Satan was at David's right hand. They were opposing him. Was he inhabiting a body then or not? I don't know. Probably not. I think Satan's able to oppose people and have influence without necessarily inhabiting, like, taking possession of a human being, taking possession of a body. Yeah, because, you know, the only body that I guess Satan, we know for sure, possessed is Judas, right? Yes. And I believe the Antichrist someday. Would you agree with that? Right. Yeah, I do agree with that. I do. I agree that when the Antichrist is killed, he's actually killed, and from that point forward, he's possessed by Satan. That's my understanding of that event. But even, I mean, regardless of whether I'm correct about that or you're correct about that, Judas definitely was possessed by Satan, but he was also influenced by Satan prior to that possession, that he was being, you know, groomed and directed by Satan all the way up until him actually, you know, entering into him, as the Bible says, that Satan entered into him. Right. Well, the Bible talks about a great war in heaven between the angels and Satan. Let's just kind of close out, talk about that a little bit, and then we'll kind of get our final thoughts. Right, so you're talking about in Revelation 8? 12. 12 Revelation. I'm sorry, 12. That's right, 12. I don't know what I was thinking. Yeah, this is a cool chapter. This is where you go from, it's a transition from the first 11 verses of Revelation into the second half, and I agree with Pastor Anderson on his understanding of the book of Revelation, how the book of Revelation is basically cut in half, and it kind of gives the events once, and then it retells them. So what we have in Revelation chapter 12 is kind of a reset or restart, and it starts off with, you know, this great wonder in heaven, a woman clothed with the sun, the moon on her feet, and it's very symbolic, too. So you have a lot of symbolism being used in this chapter, and essentially it goes back to the birth of Christ. And then you have in verse 3, there appeared another wonder in heaven, and behold, a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, seven crowns upon his heads, and his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven, and it cast them to the earth. This is where I'm getting my understanding is that these stars of heaven being the angels, and the dragon being the devil, and taking the third part of the stars of heaven, casting them to the earth, as being taking a third of the angels with him, and the dragon stood before the woman, which was ready to be delivered for the devourer child as soon as it was born. Because this is at the time of Jesus Christ's birth, and as I mentioned before, you know, we know that Satan can travel between heaven and earth, and he's able to travel freely, so I think here what Satan was doing was, hey, this is a big deal, and he's taking as many of his followers as he could with him to earth. We need to all be here to try to destroy this child, so that's him taking the third stars of heaven with him. Verse five says, And she brought forth a man child who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron, and her child was caught up unto God and to his throne. And the woman fled into the wilderness, where she had a place prepared of God that they should feed her there a thousand two hundred and three score days. And then verse seven talks about the war, right? So this is already now, like it kind of brings up the birth of Christ, and then already his resurrection, and then it kind of fast forwards real fast to bring us up to speed, and I think the purpose of that is showing us who the dragon is and giving us this insight of the things that happened, but really, really briefly, to bring forth then continuing on about the end times events, right? So this war in heaven, Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon fought in his angels, and I don't believe this has happened yet. It talks about it in the past tense, right? It's just kind of saying like, well, then this war happened, and Michael's angels fought against the dragon, dragon fought in his angels, so you're literally having an angel war, and Michael being this archangel is kind of the captain or the leader, just like the dragon or Satan is the leader of his angels, and they actually battle it out, and Michael obviously wins because it says that the dragon fought in his angels and prevailed not, so they didn't win that fight, and then it says neither was their place found any more in heaven, and that's when we know that the dragon or Satan and his devils, his demons are no longer allowed access into heaven. Now, just real quickly, we know for a fact at the time in history that Job takes place, which is very early on, admittedly, but still, when that event takes place, Satan is not cast out of heaven, right? So there's some people that think that, well, Satan and his devils got cast out of heaven like way at the beginning of creation, like that this happened way, way, way before. That cannot be true because of Job, right? So either if they're cast out of heaven now, when would this event have taken place, right? It would have had to have happened sometime after Job, after the book of Job, after those events transpired. There's nothing that would make me think that such a dramatic event has happened yet, because as we keep reading, we're going to see, too, the evidence that this event hasn't happened, that, look, God knows the beginning from the end. Just because He can speak of things as already having happened doesn't mean that for us they have happened yet. God's outside of time. The book's been written. Jesus Christ is a lamb slain from the foundation of the world. God's word existed before we did, right? Yet God already knew we would exist and could have spoken about even us as individuals in the past tense as already having lived prior to us ever being here, right? God's able to work that way, and He does in many cases. So if we keep reading this passage, there's that war, that angelic war where the devil is cast out, the dragon is cast out as angels, and then they're no longer allowed in heaven. Verse 9 says, And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent called the devil and Satan. That clears it up for us right there, that the dragon is talking about Satan, which deceiveth the whole world. He was cast out into the earth, and His angels were cast out with Him. And I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, Now has come salvation and strength and the kingdom of our God and the power of His Christ, for the accuser of our brethren is cast down, who accused them before our God day and night. And this is, again, another important aspect of who Satan is. He's known as the great accuser. He's known as someone who, just as he was accusing of Job to God, he's doing that of all believers. He's doing that to all of the saints. He's trying to accuse, you know, trying to basically get us in trouble with God. Like, oh man, you see what this guy does, and this guy, and this talks bad about him, and accuses us of things to try to hurt us, to try to do us damage. And so he's cast out, and it also says that now has come salvation and strength and the kingdom of our God. So this is obviously a point where God's about ready to set up His kingdom. And He's starting to right the wrongs, and He's starting to settle accounts and bring forth judgment. And it says in verse 11, And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony, and they loved not their lives unto death. Therefore rejoice ye heavens, and ye that dwell in them. And then look at it says this, Woe to the inhabitants of the earth and of the sea, for the devil has come down unto you having great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short time. And this is when the devil has, it says there he has great wrath. And this is what kicks off, I believe, the great tribulation. So the tribulation for us as believers is Satan's wrath. Now we are gonna be taken out before God's wrath is poured out, because we aren't appointed unto God's wrath, but we are appointed unto Satan's wrath, right? He hates us, there's nothing new about that. It's just when he's kicked out of heaven, now he knows his end, as he mentioned before. Just like the other devils, they know they're going to be judged. And when they're finally kicked out of heaven, they know that their time is very short. So now they have to kick things into high gear, they're angry, they don't have any more place to even have access to heaven anymore, and they're gonna take it out on the believers of our Lord Jesus Christ, and that's where it says, and when the dragon saw that he was cast unto the earth, he persecuted the woman which brought forth the man child. And then it goes on and on here, talking about the flood and helping the woman, and the dragon was wroth with the woman and went to make war with the remnants of her seed, which keep the commandments of God and have the testimony of Jesus Christ in verse 17. And again, we could go on and on and on about how this fits into other chapters of Revelation and the timing of all the events, but that war is kind of the starting point, which we won't see that where the devil finally, he tries to make his push apparently for power or something. We don't know the causation of that war, other than there's a war in heaven, right? Who starts the war? I don't know, but the devil doesn't win. They're cast out of heaven, and then all of the devils and Satan himself are gonna be all here on earth then to cause damage and to try to kill and destroy the saints. Yeah, and we know he does, but in the end, Jesus wins. Well, that's why the Bible says, except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved. But for the next sake, those days shall be shortened so that we know that there are gonna be still some saints that are alive and remain unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. So that some people are gonna see the salvation coming in the sky when Satan is just pouring out his wrath and just trying to destroy and martyr people. We know he's gonna kill a lot, and we know, again, from other places in Revelation that there's gonna be many that are standing before the throne that were martyred and they were killed for the cause of Christ. They're crying unto the Lord, hey, when are you gonna avenge us of this? And ultimately, then those days do get cut short. Jesus Christ comes back, and he ultimately wins the battle. We know there's a happy ending to all of it. But it all starts with this war amongst the angels and Satan losing his ability to enter into heaven. Right. Well, what is some takeaways from this conversation, Pastor? What are some things that we should take into account when we're talking about angels? Sure. Well, so some of the takeaways, I think some of the main points are, one, you know, study it out for yourself. Study it out with the use of angels that when the Bible uses the term angel, you can't always assume it's a winged creature, although it does refer to angels that way, too. I'm not saying it doesn't, right? You gotta be able to check the context. Sometimes it's referring to just, you know, simple messengers for the Lord. Other times it's referring to an actual different type of creature than us. Be careful just to study out the Scripture in context, not to be confused by that. But even more importantly, you know, one of the takeaways and one of my favorite things about my study in this is just how awesome it is that God loves us so much, even though he's done so many other things for us. He's given us salvation. You know, he hears our prayers. He answers us. He also has another creature. Even though God also gave man dominion over all the creatures of this earth, right, that he's given us that dominion, he's created another creature that is made to serve us and minister unto us. And that's super cool. It's really humbling and it's also reassuring and, you know, we can just have more comfort in what we do and more confidence too. I mean, you know, these angels are mighty creatures. You know, the angels were the ones who rolled away the stone of the tomb where Jesus lay. You know, a man wouldn't have been able to just do that by themselves, right, but the angels are mighty in power and it's cool to think that God has provided us with some protection on this earth so that we really don't have anything to fear. I mean, God is provided for us in many, many ways, and to me that's just exciting. I think it's cool to know that they're out there. Hey, you've got faith that Jesus Christ died on the cross and rose again from the dead. Why wouldn't you have faith that there's spiritual beings out there involved in a spiritual war right now? We need to be aware of that because our warfare is not a carnal one. It's a spiritual one. We're supposed to be involved in this spiritual warfare and we've got allies, we've got help on our side, so to me that's just really encouraging. Well, this has been a fascinating conversation. I know we could go on and on about this. There's other things I wanted to bring up like what angels look like. I know the Bible does give some descriptions of them, but we could just go on and on, and I really appreciate your time, Pastor. I appreciate you coming on the program. Well, you know me well. I could go on and on and on. Get a preacher talking, right? You might not be able to shut him up. Well, yeah, I really appreciate you coming on. It's really good to talk to you again 100 episodes later. Thank you, Pastor, for coming on the program. I hope you have a good day. Sure. Thanks for having me on, Paul. I really appreciate it. All right. God bless. God bless. All right. Well, that was Pastor David Berjins, and you know what, guys? These are the kind of shows that I want to keep doing, and these are super interesting. I hope you got something out of today's episode. I know I did. It definitely makes you think about the spiritual realm that's out there, and it's fascinating, fascinating, fascinating. And so make sure you head over to his website, strongholdbaptist.church, and check out more information about him. I hope you head over to his church if you're in the Atlanta area and support him over there. But, yeah, guys, that was the episode for today. I appreciate you tuning in and supporting us on this channel. Make sure if you haven't yet downloaded the Romans Road app, do that. The link will be in the description. But, yeah, guys, thanks so much for supporting us. I hope you have a good night, and God bless. God bless. .