Satanism Today - An Encyclopedia of Religion, Folklore and Popular ...

66 Demons
In Christianity, the ancient underworld that,
originally, was the common fate of humanity
became a realm of torture in which sinners and
unbelievers were tormented for eternity. In the
Christian tradition in particular, underworld
devils acquired employment tormenting the
souls of the damned, though the earliest
Christian idea was that stern, righteous angels
tormented the damned. As the righteous angels
were imaginatively removed from hell, Satan,
ruler of all other devils, became king of the
underworld.
As portrayed in the New Testament, demons
constitute the infernal equivalent of God’s celestial
host. While angels go about helping human beings
and doing good, demons harass humanity and go
about doing evil. Christian scriptures relate many
stories about exorcisms in which possessed individuals
are freed from demons. According to the
Gospels, healing the sick and the deranged by
exorcising demons constituted a major aspect of
Jesus’ ministry (e.g., Matthew 15:22 and 15:28;
Luke 4:33–35). Jesus also imparted the power to
exorcise to the disciples (Matthew 10:1).
As related in one familiar Gospel tale, demons
can also possess animals: “Now there was there
nigh unto the mountains a great herd of swine
feeding. And all the devils besought him, saying,
Send us into the swine, that we may enter into
them. And forthwith Jesus gave them leave. And
the unclean spirits went out, and entered into the
swine: and the herd ran violently down a steep
place into the sea, (they were about two thousand;)
and were choked in the sea” (Mark 5:7–13).
Although the story is not spelled out in the Bible, a
number of passages seem to allude to the wellknown
story about Satan leading a celestial revolt.
By implication, demons were formerly angels who
were cast out of heaven with Lucifer after the
failure of his revolution. Defeated in the celestial
realm, the infernal host continues a kind of guerrilla
warfare against God’s people in the earthly
realm, as reflected in a familiar passage from the
Book of Ephesians:
For we wrestle not against flesh and blood
human but against principalities, against
powers, against the rulers of the darkness of
this world, against spiritual wickedness in
high places (6:12).
The primary point of their attack is in trying to
seduce Christians into departing from the path of
salvation by teaching falsehoods:
The Spirit expressly says that in later times
some will depart from the faith by giving heed
to deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons,
through the pretensions of liars.(1 Tim. 4:1–2).
In addition to their assault on Christians,
another strategy in the guerrilla war against
heaven is for demons to assume the forms of gods
and goddesses of other religions. The people who
worship pagan deities cannot be saved:
What pagans sacrifice they offer to demons
and not to God. I do not want you to be
partners with demons. You cannot drink the
cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. You
cannot partake of the table of the Lord and
the table of demons. (1 Cor. 10:20–21).
In the United States, survey research indicates
that about a third of all Americans accept the idea
that Satan is a conscious, active entity. Presumably,
they have similar beliefs regarding demons. The
great majority of people holding this tenet are
conservative Christians. An opinion poll conduced
by Time magazine in 1993 indicated that 49
percent of the population believed in fallen angels
or devils. (The question was poorly worded so that
a more precise survey might not reflect this high a
figure.) In the present-day Christian world, only
Catholic Ireland ranks as high as the U.S. in terms
of belief in the existence of a Satanic being.
Liberal Christianity is a different story. As a
Baptist periodical noted, “Religious liberals do not
believe in the literal reality and actual personality of
Satan.... The devil or Satan is not at all a real
person, but only an impersonal evil force present
and operating in the world” (“Does Satan Really
Exist” 1993). The unnamed author of this piece
goes on to assert that,“Any system of religious belief
that denies the literal reality and actual personality
of Satan is radically unChristian and unBiblical in