Jottings

by J. Miller | Category: Jottings | Aug 1962

In the epistle to the Colossians Paul deals in particular with the Headship of Christ, as well as with His being the Image of the invisible God, the Firstborn of all creation. The Greeks had in their thoughts peopled the heavens with demoniacal powers which acted as mediators between God and men, and in their view there was no intercourse between God (or the gods) and men, or between men and God apart from the mediatorial work of demons. In, and following the apostolic period of the first century of this era there arose the sect of the Gnostics who, in their opinions, peopled the heavens with angelic mediators. In our day and for long past centuries the church of Rome has followed suit in giving a similar place to the Virgin Mary (who is falsely called "ever virgin," for Mary was the mother of a number of children, both sons and daughters) and the saints who are viewed by the idolatrous Romanists as engaged in mediatorial work on their behalf before God. These ideas of the mediatorial functions of demons, angels and saints are swept away in the writings of the apostle Paul. With one sentence he sets the matter at rest for all who will take the Scriptures as their sole guide. He says, "There is ... one Mediator ... between God and men," and he identifies this Mediator as the "Man, Christ Jesus" (1 Timothy 2.5). The whole mediatorial and also High Priestly work that is performed between God and men, and between men and God, is done by the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God. His power and love are infinite to accomplish all the work of mediation and He alone stands between God and men. He Himself said before He left His disciples, a short time before He was betrayed by Judas, "I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life: no one cometh unto the Father, but by Me" (John i4. 6).

Idolatry has and ever has had its privileged class, priests and its prophets such are initiated into its sacred and secret mysteries. Even in protestantism we have been told that the layman cannot expect to know the mysteries of the Bible; only the clerics, who have had a theological education and who know the ancient languages of Hebrew and Greek, may know what the Bible teaches. What did the godly and venerable William Tyndale translate the Scriptures into the English language for? Was it not to enable the ploughboy to know more of the Bible than the Romish priests? Was it not translated into the vulgar tongue, the tongue of the common people? For this, this noble man was strangled at the instigation of Home and his body burnt to ashes at Vilvorde in Belgium. I ask, was not the New Testament written in Koine Greek, the Greek of the common people, and written for the common people? It is the language of the market and of the business people of market stalls and of the streets, not the language of the schools and of the philosophers. Was not the book of the Law written by Moses for the one-time slaves of Egypt? And were not most of the Christians of the first century common folks, slaves and the like? Away with the idea of a privileged class who alone are raised to such eminence as that they alone are able to understand the Scriptures and the revealed secrets of Christianity!

In Colossians Paul lays before us an entrancing pen-picture of who and what the Lord Jesus Christ is.

1.He is the Image of the invisible God; not created in the image of God as Adam was.

2.He is the Firstborn of all creation; not the first to be created. Firstborn shows His place of precedence above all created things.

3.In Him, through Him, and unto Him were all things created, whether thrones; dominions, principalities or powers.

4.He is before all things.

5.In Him all things consist (hold together).

6.He is the Head of the Body, the Church.

7.He is the Beginning.

8.He is the Firstborn from the dead; not the first person to be raised from the dead.

9.In all things He has the pre-eminence.

10.In Him all the fulness dwells of the Godhead bodily.

11.Through the blood of His cross God will reconcile all things to Himself. Such is the picture the apostle draws of the One who alone stands between God and men.

Our reader who previously asked about verbal inspiration of the Holy Scriptures, asks that we should enlarge in the matter of demon-possession; what it is. He also suggests that the boy of Matthew 17.15 was not an epileptic, that the father was wrong in so describing the boy's affliction, that what the boy suffered from was not this disease, but his was a case of demon-possession only. See Jottings, September, 1961, Needed Truth, page 180, paragraph 4.

We may ask what are we to understand when we read of demons in the New Testament, and what did the Greeks understand by the word when they wrote of demons. Parkhurst in his Greek Lexicon quotes Plato as defining demons thus:

"Every demon is a middle being between God and mortal men." He means "by a middle being," that "God is not approached immediately by man, but all the commerce and intercourse between gods and men is performed by the mediation of demons." "Demons are reporters and carriers from men to the gods, and again from the gods to men, of supplications and prayers of the one, and of injunctions and rewards of devotion from the other." Parkhurst quotes a scholar, a Mr. Mede, as saying, "According to the common opinion of the Gentiles in his (Paul's) time, such powers or intelligences [werel considered as mediators between the supreme gods and mortal men ... For this was [then] the very tenet of the Gentiles, that the sovereign and celestial gods were worshipped only with a pure mind, and with hymns and praises; and that sacrifices were only for demons."

We need not quote further from Parkhurst, but we see from the above words how truly the devil had perverted the minds of men that demons, as the New Testament describes them to be evil and unclean spirits, should be viewed as mediators between God (or the gods, as the Greeks would say) and men. How truly the Roman church has followed the Greek conception of many mediators with the Virgin Mary and the saints being regarded as mediators with God, whereas God says that there is one Mediator between God and men (and only One) Himself Man, Christ Jesus (1 Timothy 2.5)! The Gnostics, a sect of the early centuries of the Christian era, had also many angelic mediators between God and men.

Paul says concerning idolatry, " that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons, and not to God: and I would not that ye should have communion with demons" (1 Corinthians 10.20, R.V.M.). Demon worship was that of the cultured, pagan Greeks. There will be a great increase of demoniacal powers at the time of the end toward which the world is hastening with ever Increasing rapidity (Revelation 16. 13, 14). Babylon the great, the coming international city will be a habitation of demons, and a hold of every unclean spirit (Revelation 18.2). The worship of the devil and demons will be prevalent at the time of the end, as well as the worship of the beast and his image (Revelation 9.20; 13.4, 12, 15; 14.9-12).

Paul when he came to Athens seemed to the Greek philosophers " a setter forth of strange demons" (Acts 17.18, R.V.M.) when he preached Jesus and the resurrection. At the beginning of his address he spoke of their superstition which word means that they were "addicted to the fear and worship of demons."

Reference to demon-possession and to such as were indwelt by unclean spirits are of frequent occurrence in the Gospels. In the Acts we have one or two references to this great evil, such as the case of the young woman in Acts 16.16-18 and that of the failure of the exorcist to cast the evil spirit out of the man (Acts 19. 11-17). The incident shows that both Jesus and Paul were well known in the world of evil spirits. Those who have not received power from God to cast out evil spirits, as the twelve apostles and the seventy others when they were sent forth by the Lord, should take note of this incident.

That certain forms of disease were associated with demon-possession is clearly seen, such as dumbness (Matthew 9.32), blindness and dumbness (Matthew 12.22), epilepsy (Mark 9.17-29), and insanity (Mark 5.1-20).

That children as well as grown-up people were possessed of demons is clear from Mark 9.17-29. It is also made clear that sickness was not an evidence that the sick were demon-possessed, and that all demons were not of the same state of badness; all are bad but not equally bad is seen from the Lord's words in Matthew 12.43-45. The narrator shows that an unclean spirit might leave a victim for a time and return thither again.

J. Miller | Aug 1962
Jottings