This is part 10 of a series; The Selves is part 1.

Have you ever been sent to do something, and when you got there, forgot exactly what it was you were supposed to do and did something else?

Have you ever been sent to the store to buy something, and came back with something else?

If not, you’re nothing at all like me. So I’m going to assume this has happened to you.

The only way to truly understand the universe and all the beings in it is through the golden rule. Understand yourself perfectly, and you’ll understand everyone else. So ask yourself… why did you buy skim milk when I asked you to get whole milk?

Was it because you hated me? Because you wanted me to drink milk that tastes like dishwater? Because you resented having to go in the first place? Or was it simply because you were distracted; in a hurry; not paying attention; not really seeing what you looked at?

Now what if I, when you come back, accuse you of rebellion; accuse you of intentionally ruining my breakfast cereal with this paste-colored water called skim milk? You would think that unfair, wouldn’t you?

It was simply a mistake; yes, you could have tried harder, and yes, you should have done better… but you’d be offended if I took this as evidence that you hated everything I stood for, wouldn’t you? You may consider yourself #goldenruled, even though you may not know why yet – because what you just described…

Is every “evil angel”.

WICKED OR INCOMPETENT?

All angels, good and evil, are messengers. It’s literally the only meaning of the Greek word “aggelos” from which we copied “angel”. Generally used in the Bible as a messenger from God, but the word could be used in Greek for any kind of messenger, from FedEx to a secretary.

So what would an evil messenger be? Well, today, to us, “evil” means “sinful, intentionally wicked.” But the word simply means bad. Not necessarily in the sense of wicked or malevolent… just… bad. Jeremiah 24:3 speaks of “evil figs.” Can we truly imagine that these figs are contemplating God’s destruction? Or are they simply… you know… bad figs (verse 8).

Likewise the Bible speaks of evil eyes, evil beasts, evil news, etc. (Matthew 6:23, Genesis 37:20, Numbers 14:37). These things are obviously not malevolent… just… bad. So then an evil angel is really just a bad messenger – and a bad messenger is no more complicated than a bad cook, an incompetent teacher, an inept doctor.

Evil angels are simply messengers who are bad at their job! They are “angels who sinned.”

Christianity has built up a lot of extra meanings around words – like “angel” – that didn’t exist when the Bible was written, and which no Greek listening to Paul would have understood in that way. “Angel” simply meant “messenger”, “evil” simply meant “bad”; and “sin” simply meant “to fall short of the mark.”

So when you hear it as Peter or Paul would have understood it, you would have understood that an “evil angel who sinned”is merely a “bad messenger”, who when sent to deliver a message “falls short of the meaning.”

Thus righteous angels more-or-less faithfully relay the message they were given, while evil angels cannot be trusted to convey a message correctly. Simple! But why, exactly, might they garble the message?

Thanks to the pagan ideas about the spirit world, we automatically assign motives to these evil angels that may not be fair. After all, a bad messenger is not necessarily an evil messenger – he may simply be an incompetent one!

He may not be deliberately twisting your words, he may simply not have been listening when you told him! The majority of bad things that happen in the world are the result of incompetence, not maliciousness. So it is also, in the spirit world.

Isaiah 56:10 His watchmen are blind, they are all without knowledge; they are all mute dogs, they can’t bark; dreaming, lying down, loving to slumber.

Daniel tells us that the “watchers”, the “eyes of God”, are angels (Daniel 4:13-17, Revelation 5:6, etc.). So here Isaiah tells us that God’s watchmen are blind. That they are without knowledge! So it’s hard to get good help in heaven too!

This is why God says to an angel – a watchman, an eye – over the church of Sardis, “Remember therefore how you have received and heard. Keep it, and repent” (Revelation 3:1-3). Why tell someone to remember something you told them… unless they have forgotten??

But does forgetting a message imply evil intent? Or does it simply imply disinterest, incompetence, laziness? So when an angel forgets the message, leaves things out, paraphrases too much or takes too long to deliver it, he’s a bad angel… but not necessarily an intentionally wicked angel who messed up the message on purpose because he hated his Master!

So judge them as you judged yourself when you bought skim milk. Their actions were wrong; their heart was lazy, their spirit was rushed, their soul was sleepy… but to assume an intent to rebel against God was not fair to you, nor is it fair to them.

EVIL SPIRITS

Think back; when did Jesus say the devils were malevolent, exactly? He used words like wicked, evil, unclean, and so on – but these words, negative though they sound to us, did not really mean malevolent in the original Greek.

Take Mark 9:25; “foul” spirit simply means, like in English, “unclean” (Mark 1:25-27). Now unclean is certainly not holy, but a pig is unclean and yet is not malevolent! It’s just dirty and selfish. That’s not the same thing as the devils you see portrayed on TV!

Likewise, God uses the word “wicked” to apply to some of the spirits whom Jesus cast out; to us, in modern English, that means malevolent. But it was translated from the Greek word poneros which means “full of labours, annoyances, hardships.”

You may recognize its relative, the English word “ponderous”, which has the connotation of “difficult by reason of weight.” Poneros was also used metaphorically, building on the idea of a difficult and laborious job that you find unpleasant, to arrive at the secondary meanings of “bad, diseased, blind.”

But this doesn’t mean malevolent – it just means “burdened” or “burdensome”. Certainly not “wicked” as we use it today. For example, God used the same Greek word to refer to a “wicked person” in 1 Corinthians 5:11-13. But reading the context, are fornicators and drunks deliberately, intentionally, sadistically evil?

Of course not. They do bad things, sure; for selfish reasons, sure. But not evil because they want to rebel against God or intentionally hurt others for no reason! They are deceived, as are we all (2 Timothy 3:13).

Yet they are called wicked, just as the bad messengers were, from the Greek word poneros – “burdened”. Because they likewise are burdened by sin, burdened by deception… but not intentionally, consciously, doing evil for evil’s sake!

So when Jesus called them “poneros spirits”, a much better translation would be burdened and/or burdensome spirits. Spirits who are not necessarily malevolent – merely those who are weighed down by sin (Psalms 38:4). Weighed down by falling short of the mark while also doing a job their fractions find burdensome.

So are these deceived deceivers wicked, evil, sadistic… or simply burdened with the same struggle we all face, the one Paul describes in Romans 7:14-25? Like us, they, as a result of failing at that struggle, do very bad things to other people – but not necessarily because they want to hurt them.

It is unfair to impute malignance to that which is simply dirty, confused, burdened, stressed out, or blind. Some of the demons may be malevolent – that has not yet been proven here – but it is unfair to assume that based solely on the words “unclean” (dirty), “evil” (bad at what they do) or “wicked” (burdened).

If I say “that woman is a terrible cook”, does it follow that she is a terrible person? An evil harpy bent on the destruction of God and taking over His throne? No? Why not? Because being bad at something doesn’t mean you are, necessarily, doing it wrong on purpose.

There are a lot of reasons a woman might be a bad cook; lack of training, lack of time, lack of interest, lack of money or ingredients, lack of taste buds… yes, or she may actually despise her husband and want him to suffer. But it’s unfair to automatically leap to that conclusion!

If you worked for me, wouldn’t you think it was unfair of me to assign the sin of rebellion to every mistake you ever made? Is it fair to assume every time you lost a message or misunderstood what was said, you did so because you are a willful, deliberate, evil person? Then you’ve been #goldenruled again!

WE MEAN WELL

Proverbs 16:2 (KJV) All the ways of a man are clean in his own eyes; but the LORD weigheth the spirits.

This is a key verse to understanding the universe we live in; because the worst monsters in human history believed they were doing the right thing, taking care of them and theirs as best they knew how; serving the greater good, even if occasionally that forces them to do bad things to people who they feel had it coming.

So why wouldn’t the same be true of evil angels?

Why wouldn’t all their ways seem right in their own eyes, no matter how obvious their evil is to everyone else? Is it fair to assume, with no evidence, that just because their actions cause harm, their intent was to cause harm – for no good reason, solely because they love evil?

Take 1 Samuel 15 for example. God had told Saul, through Samuel, under no circumstances to leave anything alive in Amalek (verses 1-3). But Saul had reinterpreted that command to mean “leave the best alive for a sacrifice” (verses 8-9), which angered God (verses 10-12).

And yet when Samuel came to see Saul, Saul was so convinced he had done what God said, the first words out of his mouth were a joyous “I carried out the LORD’S instructions” (verse 13, GWV). He was proud of what he had done!

For in his eyes, he had not only obeyed God’s command, he’d done EVEN MORE, and brought back gifts for God! (verse 15). Even though he had obviously, and I mean OBVIOUSLY, not obeyed the commandment of God, which led Samuel to ask “if you’ve done what God said… why am I hearing the sounds of sheep??” (verse 14).

So Samuel explains just how Saul failed to do what God had sent him to do (verses 16-19). But Saul STILL couldn’t see it! He was STILL convinced that he did exactly what God asked and said “no, no, I DID obey the commandment of God!” (verses 20-21).

Samuel wasn’t buying any of this, only then did Saul repent (verses 22-26). But even then it’s not clear if he really understood his sin, or simply gave up defending it. What’s interesting though, is that God called Saul a rebel in verse 23.

But was he though, in the sense we use the term? I mean, yes, he didn’t actually do what God said… but he was REALLY convinced he had. You and I can plainly see he did no such thing… But he had rationalized that he was doing what God REALLY MEANT, what God really wanted, even when it wasn’t what He had said at all!

At no point did he say “to hell with God, I’m doing things MY WAY!”… And neither have any of the devils! At no point in this did Saul openly rebel against God’s authority, even after God called him a stubborn, rebellious, witch-craft practicing idolater and took his kingdom away from him! (verses 27-31).

Saul’s “rebellion” was in taking the messages of God and redefining what God meant. Thus he rebelled in spirit by paraphrasing God’s messages to justify doing things that his heart lusted after, and wanted to believe were God’s true intent. But his soul never once rebelled by refusing to obey God!

And if you could talk to a mid-ranking devil, you would hear this exact same story. In his own eyes, everything he’s done was what God wanted (Proverbs 18:17). Sure, not perfect, but the best he could do!

An evil angel doesn’t understand God’s way, and is genuinely confused about why his actions aren’t good enough for God! Like Saul, the devils are, in their own way, obeying the spirit of the law; a spirit that they are clearly not qualified to interpret! Just as so many Christians do with the law today! (1 Timothy 1:7).

Thus the angels who sinned are not fairly called rebels, in the sense of open defiance; but rather beings who cannot manage their fractions well enough to focus on following God properly.

Just like you and me.

SERVANTS OF GOD

Like the Pharisees they inspired, the demons honor God with their lips, but their heart is far from Him (Matthew 15:8). And since their heart doesn’t understand God’s way, their actions cannot possibly be something God would want (Matthew 7:15-20).

And yet, like Saul, they have at no time refused to obey God’s direct commands. Their heart has rebelled, their spirit has rebelled – as have all of ours – but they, their souls, have not! Go ahead – look for a verse that shows a devil disobeying a direct command of God. It doesn’t exist, because it doesn’t happen, not ever!

It may surprise you that there is not a single recorded fight between any devil and God or Jesus. Not one. Because Satan knows God is stronger than he is. Satan knows that God would instantly win any physical battle which is why there has never been one!

In Revelation 12, we see the devil battling in heaven; but not, as commonly supposed, with God or Jesus. Instead, we see him battling with Michael, another angel of roughly equal authority! There is no recorded time where the devil has ever battled against God or the Lord.

It always gets me – Christians believe God is the Almighty, but then believes that the devil has successfully rebelled against Him, and does whatever he feels like! But the Bible is very clear: That is not true.

James 2:19 (BBE) You have the belief that God is one, and you do well: the evil spirits have the same belief, shaking with fear.

Defiant devils ruling over hell are never portrayed as “shaking with fear” in the movies, are they? But this is what the Bible says. Indeed, we know that the evil spirits obeyed Jesus and all of those who come in His name:

Luke 10:17-20 The seventy returned with joy, saying, “Lord, even the demons are SUBJECT to us in your name!” He said to them, “I saw Satan having fallen like lightning from heaven. Behold, I give you authority to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy. Nothing will in any way hurt you.”

Try to wrap your head around this, because no one seems to get it; if the demons are subject to the true Christians, it means they obey the commands of the true Christians. And if that’s true, then the demons are obedient to God’s authority.

And if they are obedient to God’s authority, then by definition, they are servants of God! Remember, the Lord consciously, knowingly, sends lying spirits to do things for Him! (1 Kings 22:19-23). How could He do that with people who were not His servants?

Again, God consciously, knowingly, sent evil angels to torment Egypt (Psalms 78:49). And they went! So if they obey Him… they are not in rebellion against Him!! That doesn’t mean they obey Him well, or that they relay His messages accurately… but they obey Him!

Which means “rebel” is a very poor word to describe their relationship to God!

REBELLION OR INCOMPETENCE

All angels obey God’s commandments. And yet all angels likewise disobey God in their heart and don’t fear enough to edit His words in their spirit. But there is no angel, no atom in the universe who has ever said “I will not obey you, God.”

If there were… God couldn’t be the ALL MIGHTY! By definition He has power over everything, and everyone.

This requires us to rethink everything we think we know about the spirit world, and the nature of the “battle” between good and evil. Because the devils believe God, and tremble; so their rebellion can only be in their heart, among their own fractions – just like your own rebellion! (Jeremiah 17:9, Romans 7:14-24).

Of course, if their heart is evil, their actions will be bad as well (Matthew 12:34). But in their own deceived way, they believe they are doing what God said – or at least, what they think God really meant.

Note I said “they believe they are doing their best.” They are not, in fact, doing their best – which is why God is upset. But their hearts and spirits have blinded them to the truth, have justified their mistakes, and all of their actions are right in their own eyes!

The point to this lesson is simple:

Never blame on rebellion that which is adequately explained by incompetence.

Matthew 28:18 Jesus came to them and spoke to them, saying, “All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth.”

So here’s the great secret; all things in heaven and in Earth obey Jesus – including the devil himself!

There is not now, nor has there ever been, a rebellion in heaven! Everything in heaven and Earth obeys God… or at least… believes that they do.

Continue to Part 11: Can God Save Demons?