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Demons, what are they?


Jor-el

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Paradise (also known as the bosom of Abraham, although some don't accept this) is also a place within Hades (Sheol), it is also once again referenced in the same scripture above.

See: http://en.wikipedia....osom_of_Abraham

I agree that Paradise was within Hades at one time, but Jesus Christ changed all that.

II Cor. 12:3,4

Peace.

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Well, I do not go in for long and convoluted posts with lots of quotes from this holy book or that, and I am not so pedantic to qualify everything I write. I think the general point of my post is that the Abrahamic religions have twisted the the old beliefs and have deliberately demonised anything that was pagan. This is simply a matter of "spin" for propaganda purposes. There is nothing that modern politicians do that was not done in the past. Unfortunately, because this topic is in the religious realm, then irrational thinking warps reality. Nobody likes to think their religion is based on myths and that the founders of that religion acted like worst kind of agitprop liers back in the days. There is a tendency to see these old relgious texts and ancient myths as some sort of reality, and as such people argue about this or that meaning or whatever, or quote chapter this or verse that, yet all is a heap of nonsense from our imagination.

As a general point, after reading Gulliver's Travels, and watching Life of Brian and Meaning of Life, I can never take any organised religion seriously again. One man's demon is anothers angel, there is no meeting point between the two positions, only counting angels, or demons, dancing on head of pin for eternity

The Abrahamic religion par excellence is Judaism and Judaism shared much of its beliefs with the greater Near Middle East. Much of what is today known as the ancient Greek Myths are part of that culture and form an intricate web of belief that the bible is part of. Christianity did change alot of the concepts in its interpretations of many aspects of this cosmological model, but did not change it as much as many think.

While you may call all this "imagination", it is not so in my case and for many others. That is simply the division between belief and disbelief, none holds greater authority than the other but must be a careful and considered decision based on what we see as truth. You have yours, I have mine.

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Hi Jor-el,

Are Seraphim "angels" dragons?

Peace.

No, they are not Dragons, but there is more than a little evidence that they have serpentine feaures.

Since this would lead to expand this yopic in a huge way, I will link you to one of my old posts where I explain this in some detail.

http://www.unexplain...65#entry2428731

Here's an interesting link:

http://www.case.edu/...iew=1360447725

Interesting, it pretty much sums up alot of what I've been saying here.

Edited by Jor-el
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I agree that Paradise was within Hades at one time, but Jesus Christ changed all that.

II Cor. 12:3,4

Peace.

Yes he did, Paradise as referred to in Hades is now empty. Since his ascension, Paradise means Heaven the abode of God. But that again is only temporary, because ultimately, Paradise will be Earth itself.

Revelation 21

Edited by Jor-el
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No, they are not Dragons, but there is more than a little evidence that they have serpentine feaures.

Since this would lead to expand this yopic in a huge way, I will link you to one of my old posts where I explain this in some detail.

http://www.unexplain...65#entry2428731

Interesting, it pretty much sums up alot of what I've been saying here.

Thank you for the link! Am I getting this right: Is the division between the Jewish faith and Christianity is far greater than I've imagined it to be? Jewish people worship Yahweh, and Jesus Christ is Elohim or El?

Peace.

Edited by braveone2u
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Thank you for the link! Am I getting this right: Is the division between the Jewish faith and Christianity is far greater than I've imagined it to be? Jewish people worship Yahweh, and Jesus Christ is Elohim or El?

Peace.

No, the opposite is true, Christianity after it seperated from Judaism at the end of the 1st century, incorporated much that was not biblical, and that included many of its approaches to the Word of God and its interpretation. Judaism did much the same thing after the 1st century. The divide today is great, but that was not the case of christianity and Judaism as is found in the bible.

My approach is to drop much of what christianity teaches and assumes to be true and go back to the word of God as found in the bible. This means that one has to study Judaism as well and when we do this a new path opens up to us with truths that have remained lost for centuries.

Much of Jesus words only become clear when we do this, we begin to see that there is something that binds us that is closer to what Gods teaches us in the bible than what is taught to us in church. Not that the church is irrelevant,but that we begin to learn things that churches do not even know to teach us.

Yahweh is El, they are one and the same. They are names that God uses for himself, and we find this to be the case throughout the bible, but there are other names that God used before these. Enlil and Anu are both facets of the one who is called Yahweh or El. Anu and Enlil were the Gods of ancient Mesopotamia, just as Satan, was once known as Enki and Ea (the earth is named after him). Through a process called generational layering, much of what we have concerning these two "gods" are distortions of one being, the God of the bible. If you want to know more I can give you an excellent link that will explain this in painstaking detail.

Here is a topic that adresses the Yahweh and El issue, that I took part in... if you have any questions on that I can answer those questions there.

http://www.unexplain...howtopic=221915

Edited by Jor-el
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While you may call all this "imagination", it is not so in my case and for many others. That is simply the division between belief and disbelief, none holds greater authority than the other but must be a careful and considered decision based on what we see as truth. You have yours, I have mine.

Yet there can only be one truth, so surely the real truth holds authority over all. I do not know the real truth, though I know it is not contained in any "holy" book written by men. There is a bigger division between belief and disbelief, it is the division between believers in the false Abrahamic god, and those whose beliefs were subverted, twisted and destroyed. Is belief in Ra-Horakhty, or Thor or Perun, a belief in evil? do believers in those Gods have equal "authority" with people of "the book"? I wonder who the real demons are, the old gods, or the angels of the Abrahamists.

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The modern mind is arrogant to the extreme, I am an example of it. Demons could exist, life forms different than us, non material as far as we can see and perhaps evil. Why not? It is kind of crazy that anything exist at all. We are not that intelligent and our limitation imposed on us by our sense are extreme and they limit us. Religion could be another way to acess that reality. In the end, I find it doubtful, but again I am an arrogant SOB :alien:

:su doug :st

I like your thinking on this. Maybe demons do exist, if so, can we explain them only in a religious context? I don't think that's the case, it does seem to me that if we view them only through one particular context we may be blinding ourselves to other realities.

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Interesting, Beany. What I think is that the more things change the more they stay the same. That expression never made sense to me, but what I mean is that, God's angels are not supposed to interfere with human affairs unless directed by God himself. However, the disobedient ones do and have since before the flood. The apostle Paul used the Greek word pharmakia, which means druggery and is where our word pharmacy comes from. It is translated at Galatians 5:20 as "spiritism."

Vine’s Expository Dictionary of Old and New Testament Words (1981, Vol. 4, pp. 51, 52) says of the word: “(Eng., pharmacy etc.) primarily signified the use of medicine, drugs, spells; then, poisoning; then, sorcery, Gal. 5:20, R.V., ‘sorcery’ (A.V., ‘witchcraft’), mentioned as one of ‘the works of the flesh.’ See also Rev. 9:21; 18:23. In the Sept[uagint], Ex. 7:11, 22; 8:7, 18; Isa. 47:9, 12. In sorcery, the use of drugs, whether simple or potent, was generally accompanied by incantations and appeals to occult powers, with the provision of various charms, amulets, etc., professedly designed to keep the applicant or patient from the attention and power of demons, but actually to impress the applicant with the mysterious resources and powers of the sorcerer.”

Primitive people use drugs to gain access to the "spirit world." Demons take advantage of this by interfering with human affairs. These are often thought of as good, for example, the fortune telling girl in Acts who predicted things for local businessmen who wanted to kill the apostle Paul for casting the demon out of the girl.

David... Not all primitive people used entheogens to gain acces to the spirit world. Some are taught and some are called. The same thing happens to this day. Your prophets and saints are some of these very same people only under a different cultural context. Spirituality did not originate in the middle east. Long before Abraham, there were others. ;)

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Yet there can only be one truth, so surely the real truth holds authority over all. I do not know the real truth, though I know it is not contained in any "holy" book written by men. There is a bigger division between belief and disbelief, it is the division between believers in the false Abrahamic god, and those whose beliefs were subverted, twisted and destroyed. Is belief in Ra-Horakhty, or Thor or Perun, a belief in evil? do believers in those Gods have equal "authority" with people of "the book"? I wonder who the real demons are, the old gods, or the angels of the Abrahamists.

I believe there is only one truth, but what you percieve it to be is not it, just as what I percieve it to be, is not it, rather what we percieve are facets and shadows of that truth, the way it is revealed to you and to me may be different, and thus we may disagree, but truth itself remains unbelemished by either of our views.

As for having authority, none of us have it in ourselves, only God has the authority to empower us, and that is done by his sovereign will which none can contradict.

Edited by Jor-el
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I like your thinking on this. Maybe demons do exist, if so, can we explain them only in a religious context? I don't think that's the case, it does seem to me that if we view them only through one particular context we may be blinding ourselves to other realities.

We can only really explain them within the religious context, all other contexts reject their existence remember?

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Demons are real. No doubt about it to me. I've been possessed twice by one and have seen two. They had a horn on their heads and their voices sounded like that of horror. One told me that his job was to do evil to me.

I've also seen my gaurdian angel. She had wings on her back and a beautiful sounding voice. She was calling out my name when I heard her.

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We can only really explain them within the religious context, all other contexts reject their existence remember?

what is the religous context ?

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what is the religous context ?

It seriously depends on what religion we are talking about, the Abrahamic religions have one take, others have other views, One would have to be specific on the religion in question before a response can be made.

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One thing i noticed is people here have failed to mention the djinn and the dybbuk. How many religions have demons? How many have a way to exercise or banish them?

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One thing i noticed is people here have failed to mention the djinn and the dybbuk. How many religions have demons? How many have a way to exercise or banish them?

There's a video of an Islamic exorcism that's interesting. Regardless of its validity, the man in question makes some rather odd-looking movements that don't seem humanly possible.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5C-VZN-lZQ

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demons were before christianity became so...also. just as varied as humans are--this includes, 'appearance', so are they...I'm told that sometymes witches themselves cant tell them apart from humans...then there are those who fit the idea of what we think they should look like...

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So we shouldn't use Christian terms to identify what they are. Too old and seen in Christian and non christan cultures.

The other question is why they do what they do. Are they evil or just serving themselves.

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I can never hold a belief in demons..None of it makes sense, and I have read dozens of stories, but still nothing convinces me they are for real... So the question was - Demons, what are they? My answer is - Fictional characters used as a scare tactic to push you close to god in my opinion

Edited by Beckys_Mom
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Without going into all the Scriptural references, there are those who think demons (as mentioned in Scripture) are fallen angels. Satan (which means accuser) did not start as evil, but as one of the archangels and was originally a good angel known as Lucifer (which means light bearer). At some point pride filled his heart and he wanted to take God's place and managed to convince 1/3 or so of the angels to join in an open rebellion against God. They were judged by God, and cast to the earth, after all they were not a match for God as he is Omnipotent. Unable to directly hurt God, they instead attacked the highest created being on earth, one made in God's image: man. The Devil (another word for Satan and one that means tempter) initiated the events that led to the fall of man and by lineage, mankind. So by this interpretation, demons are the lieutenants of Satan, fallen angels who do his will upon the earth.

Now there is a second theory which is not universally shared by theologians and indeed may have led to an attempt to ban a book from the Biblical canon. In Genesis 6 we have a couple of names/titles of interest:

6 When human beings began to increase in number on the earth and daughters were born to them, 2 the sons of God saw that the daughters of humans were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose.3 Then the Lord said, “My Spirit will not contend with[a] humans forever, for they are mortal; their days will be a hundred and twenty years.”

4 The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also afterward—when the sons of God went to the daughters of humans and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown.

Some think this is a reference to the Godly line of Seth marrying into the evil line of Cain. But that makes little sense in that Seth, like Cain, was a fallen human being and so were the offspring of both.

First of all then, who were the "sons of God" mentioned here. It has been said that the Bible interprets the Bible. For this you go to the oldest book in the Bible, the book of Job, not the oldest in terms of the time it describes, for obviously the Creation event in Genesis has to be first, but rather it was likely the first book to be penned that is in the Biblical canon. In it in Chapter 1 you read:

6 One day the angels (Hebrew: sons of God)came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came with them. 7 The Lord said to Satan, “Where have you come from?”

Satan answered the Lord, “From roaming throughout the earth, going back and forth on it.”

Modern translations use angels and that is what they are talking about in context, but literally it says "sons of God".

Now the second name in Genesis 6 of interest is Nephilim, which has been translated "fallen ones".

The implications of Genesis six is this: the sons of God (angels, and in this case fallen angels) looked at the daughters of men (human females) desired them, married them and had offspring by them, creating a hybrid race, something that God considered a great sin and also likely a contamination of the human race. Their offspring were the "men of renown" or the "heros of old" depending on your translation. When you combine related plants, animals, etcetera, you get something called hybrid vigor, that is often stronger than one or both of the parents. A mule for instance combines some of the best traits of the horse and the donkey.

The Book that was pretty much banned from Scriptural canon and indeed was almost destroyed is the Apocryphal Book of Enoch. It was accepted as part of the canon in the Ethiopian Bible, and if I remember right there were only a few copies left by the time it was rediscovered. Today I believe it is also found in many Catholic Bibles. I am not saying that it is either inspired or belongs in the Bible, only that at one time it had been accepted in some of the early Christian communities and is still accepted today in some as well. I believe it was taken out by some of the early Church fathers and may have been rejected because of its implications. Enoch was one of the descendants of Adam that lived prior to the Biblical flood. The story was that several angels committed this great sin of cohabiting with human females and produced offspring by them, they were condemned by God and some apparently were bound from that point on until the final judgment.* They came to Enoch, who was an extremely righteous man in the sight of God, and asked him to plead their case and beg their forgiveness to the Lord. But it was to no avail, their sin was judged too great.

* 6 And the angels who did not keep their positions of authority but abandoned their proper dwelling—these he has kept in darkness, bound with everlasting chains for judgment on the great Day. (Jude 6)

This comment in the Book of Jude comes from the Book of Enoch. That might give some indication that the Book of Enoch was regarded as God breathed in the first century, or it might just mean the author (Jude, let by the Holy Spirit) used illustrations that would have been known in that day to make his point. But is it curious that it occurs in a canonically accepted book. (I believe there is also another quote from Enoch used in Scripture also, but not relevant to this discussion.)

In any case, the question about who/what are demons may come down to this: The Nephilim, as described in Enoch, were gigantic beings and terrible. And their angel fathers taught men about weapons of war, drugs and other things of evil. They, along with all but eight members of the human race were destroyed in the Biblical Flood. Their spirits, which are neither spirits of men nor of angels, are perhaps the spirits that the Bible calls demons, roaming the earth and finding no rest, with a hatred for both mankind and God.

Whichever of these comes closest to the truth about demons, Jesus, the second Person of the Trinity and God Himself, did not doubt the existence of demons, and confronted them on several occasions in the Gospels. They knew who He was and He in turn would not let them speak concerning Himself. He had complete authority over them and they begged Him not to send them to "the pit", perhaps a reference to the place where the angel were imprisoned. If one is a follower of Jesus as God Incarnate, then one must acknowledge that He would know the truth about the existence of these entities.

Edited by Sundew
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They are the souls of liberal lawmakers.

And yet most religion extremes come from the extreme right. Just as this demon crap is used to force people to believe through fear of something not even real.

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Demons are whatever you imagine them to be... not different from Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny.

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They are the souls of liberal lawmakers.

And their minions continue to be their minions on the other side, suckling off the hairy, putrid pustules on their posteriors.

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