CHAPTER TWELVE: RESIST WICKED SPIRIT FORCES

RIGHT after his baptism, Jesus Christ went into the Judean wilderness to pray and meditate. There Satan the Devil tried to get him to break God's law. However, Jesus rejected the Devil's bait and did not get caught in his trap. Jesus faced other wicked spirits during his ministry on earth. Yet, time and again, he rebuked and resisted them.  Luke 4:1-13; 8:26-34; 9:37-43.

Bible accounts describing those encounters should convince us that wicked spirit forces do exist.  They try to mislead people. However, we can resist these evil spirits.  But where do wicked spirits come from?  Why do they try to deceive humans?  And what methods do they use to achieve their ends?  Finding the answers to such questions as these will help you resist wicked spirit forces.

WICKED SPIRITS-THEIR ORIGIN AND TARGET

Jehovah God made a multitude of spirit creatures long before he created humans.  (Job 38:4, 7) As explained in Chapter 6, one of these angels developed a desire to have humans worship him instead of worshiping Jehovah. Pursuing that objective, this wicked angel resisted and slandered the Creator, even suggesting to the first woman that God was a liar.  Fittingly, then, this rebellious spirit creature became known as Satan (resister) the Devil (slanderer). -Genesis 3:1-5; Job 1:6. 

Later, other angels sided with Satan the Devil. In the days of the righteous man Noah, some of these abandoned their service in heaven and took on fleshly bodies to satisfy their lust for sexual relations with earthly women. Satan had no doubt  influenced those angels to take that disobedient course. It led to their fathering the hybrid often called Nephilim,m who became violent bullies.    When Jehovah caused the great Deluge, it destroyed corrupted mankind and this unnatural progeny of the disobedient angels.  the rebellious angels  escaped destruction  by dematerializing their fleshly bodies and returning to the spirit realm.  But God restrained these demons by treating them as outcasts in spiritual darkness.   (Genesis 6:1-7, 17; Jude 6) Satan, "the ruler of the demons," and his wicked angels nevertheless have pushed on with their rebellion.  (Luke 11:15) What is their goal?  

The evil objective of Satan and his demons is to turn people against Jehovah God.  Hence, these wicked ones have been misleading, frightening, and assaulting people throughout human history.  (Revelation 12:9)  Modern-day examples confirm that demon aggression is more vicious now than it has ever been. To entrap people, the demons often use whatever they can and anything they can  to mislead people, one example is they use spiritism in all its forms.  How do the demons use this bait, and how can you defend yourself? 

Next time: RESIST WICKED SPIRIT FORCES/HOW WICKED SPIRITS TRY TO MISLEAD YOU 

From the book: KNOWLEDGE  That  Leads to Everlasting Life