One of my boys has been curious about Angels and Demons lately. He asked me the other day what Satan’s name was when he was an angel in heaven. “Lucifer”, I told him.
On the way to school today he mentioned to me that there were Angels outside of the car, flying as fast as they could to keep up with us and keep us safe. My other son chimed in, “and they are with us on the playground.”
Then one of them asked me, “where is Heaven?” To which I responded, “that’s a good question, buddy.” And left it at that.
Most of us are at least curious, and at time fascinated, with the spiritual realm. We know that Angels and Demons exist; we know that there is more going on than what we see. What we don’t know is what exactly that looks like or how exactly it works.
The popular novels “This Present Darkness” and “Piercing the Darkness” set the tone of the conversation when I was growing up. I remember the fascination that I had, and others had, with the idea that if we could just look hard enough, or distort our view in some fashion, we’d be able to see the demons nearby or the Angels singing along with us while we worshiped. We treated the spiritual realm like one of those computer generated posters that you have to stare through until suddenly, at just the right angle, a 3D image pops out and you have a whole new perspective. Like those posters, the hope is that once you’ve seen it, you can’t not see it.
I remember talking to a woman once who had just lost her job at a Christian School. She was convinced that there was some impropriety going on, and that there were folks who were out to get her and that, eventually, those folks got to the right people and she was let go. As she passed the school, she said, she looked up and swore that she saw demons circling around the top of the school. The school and it’s administration, it seemed, had been possessed.
Of course, this is a person who had just lost her job from that very same school. I gathered quickly that she was extremely upset about this, but seemingly couched her feelings in spiritual talk rather than admitting the hurt. I don’t know whether or not she saw something that looked like demons, or if in her hurt she wanted so badly to believe that she was right and the school was wrong that she subconsciously fabricated something to be true. I doubt that she saw actual demons floating around the top of the school. Not because it’s not possible, but because it’s highly unlikely that the school was 100% in the wrong and that she was 100% in the right, so that they were somehow possessed and she were somehow righteous. If the school was possessed by demons, leading them to operate improperly, then she must have been possessed by demons too, since there was no doubt that she operated with some impropriety as well. If she saw demons floating above the school, I wondered why she didn’t see them over her head when she looked in the mirror.
The truth is that most of us don’t need demons to mess around with us to get us to act wrongly or to do evil. We are fully capable of making those choices on our own, and often do. Even Christians continue all the time to make wrong choices. That doesn’t suddenly mean that a demon has captured them; it does mean that we are constantly and desperately in need of a savior.
I’m not saying that demon possession doesn't exist. If it happened in the New Testament, it can certainly happen today. I don't think that a Christian can be possessed by a demon, however, because when the strong man moves in, the other strong man gets booted (Matthew 12:29).
I’m also not saying that my sons understanding of Angels was incorrect. Surely, they protect us in the same way that demons surely tempt us. Were they flying next to the car? Are they on the playground? I don't know where they are. What I do know is that the next time I'm praying for my son, and somehow he doesn't slip when he could have slipped or he falls and doesn't get hurt or a mis-thrown rock doesn't hit him that could have hit him, there's a high likelihood that an angel has intervened, protecting the children of God.
It seems, though, that unless there is a specific message that God wants to send to you, it is highly unlikely that you are going to see one. The same goes for demons. We are living in a world that was once under the rule of the Devil, and is now slowly coming under the guaranteed rule of Christ. The Devil has been overthrown. The New Strong Man is here, and the minions of the devil have no power over us anymore.
In the meantime, there's a lot going on around us that we have no idea about. And some day, that dimensional curtain will be torn back and the world will be renewed and this world will fully coincide with that world and we'll see what has been going on all around us the entire time.
But not yet.