Pagans are not being addressed in the scripture but warning believers to endure towards the end to escape that fire that is coming on the earth.
2 Peter 3rd Chapter
Which is why the text should be understood within the Biblical context. Perhaps I did not make my case sufficiently clear because your response makes
my case!
If we think "hell" is a specific place somewhere in creation where dead people go to hang out under the rule of Satan (or anyone other than God Himself) we're doing so with a mindset that is more pagan than Christian, more mythological than scriptural. To the Greek, Roman, Norse, etc. - the pagan mindset - hel was a place where people went when they died. That place was under the surface of the earth and despite the people being dead they were still conscious. They moped around in the underworld in misery because they no longer lived a life above ground where they could do as they pleased. Theirs was a an existent subjected to the rule of Hel (Germanic/Norse), Hades or Tartarus (Greek), Pluto (Roman), Osiris (Egyptian), Nergal (Babylonian/Assyrian), Mot (Canaanite), or any number of the pagan cultural myths surrounding Israel.
NONE of it is what Jesus taught.
Alternatively, The classic, mainstream, orthodox
Judaic view was that of Sheol. While references to an afterlife can be found throughout the Old Testament that was not the prevailing theology in Judaism. In Judaism you died and that was it. Their theology was nihilistic. The dead know
nothing.
THAT is not what Jesus taught, either. Jesus did not teach pagan mythology and he did not teach Sadducean theology.
During the intertestamental period a handful of sects developed with Judaism, among them the Pharisees. What separated the Pharisees from the Sadducees was their belief in a resurrection and a life on the other side of the grave BUT it was NOT a life of misery under the surface of the earth under the rule of a lesser God. Their theology was much closer to what Jesus taught about life and death and that is one of the reasons why the Pharisees were more open to hearing the gospel and receiving it than their Judaic counterparts, the Sadducees.
Now, returning to the op.....
One of the other reasons we know demons are not dead humans is because in orthodox Judaism humans did not continue to live after they died. Any modern Christian incorrectly thinking demons are dead humans has to leave the Judaic context of scripture. The Jewish audience of Jesus in the first century would never have thought any demon might be a dead human because once you're dead you are dead. Only someone of the Pharisaic persuasion might have imagined such a premise and, even then, he would have to ignore the aforementioned chasm separating the living and the dead.
You are forgetting the result of this casting down to the earth after the rapture event is that the devil is about to bring his New World Order with the mark of the beast system to buy & sell after thar fiery calamity burns a third of the earth which will be the western hemisphere with USA.
Please do not tell others what I remember or forget.
I AM NOT FORGETTING ANYTHING! I know that phrase is an accepted social convention, but it is a very poor one to practice, especially in a text-only medium like an internet discussion board. Use, "
remember" instead
.
Your comments are a minority view within Christianity and based solely and exclusively on the Dispensational interpretation. Nothing more. And you need to remember that, especially when trading posts with me because Dispensationalism is a wretched eschatology that has bred 200 years of false teachers. Everyone else in Christendom views the rapture as postmillennial. Remember that. Do not think Dispensational viewpoints are ever persuasive for anyone other than fellows Dispensationalists.
I am beginning to suspect that when Satan had fell, it was in the garden of Eden for when he had tempted Eve to sin.
I agree. My regrets for not making that clearer. I assume that would be understood when I mentioned his being cast out of heaven to the earth, his being on earth did not preclude his being bound, the heavens (and possibly hell) transcending the earth, his being summoned before God, and care should be taken not to commit fallacies of false dichotomy. Yes, I think it reasonable to conclude Revelation 12:9 is a long-passed event explaining either Satan's presence in Eden and supported by Isaiah 14, Luke 10, and Jude 1.
Let's regather the op because the thread should stay on topic and not turn eschatological or soteriological. There are a number of reasons, all firmly couched in plainly read scripture, that readily refute the premise demons are, or can be, dead humans. Yes?
. Lucifer was cast out of heaven and shows up as a serpent in Eden despite (or in spite of) his being sent to the abyss or trash heap (tartarus) held in chains or bonds of darkness. There's no reason why these things cannot overlap.
