The Demons Had a Deal With God

Welcome to another Thursday UNFILTERED blog post, the only blog that thinks every computer printer is demon-possessed, but only during important moments.

Every blue moon, I pull one of the segments from The Deeper Christian Life Network into these Thursday Unfiltered articles. Today’s pick: a very recent essay I wrote from the “Scriptural Game-Changers” series. (Like the exclusive Master Classes, I post these Game-Changers regularly on the Network. To date, there are 40 such essays there.)

Here it is. Dig in.

The Demons Knew Something About Jesus You Probably Don’t

GAME CHANGER: Don’t Torment Us Before the Appointed Time

And behold, they cried out, “What have you to do with us, O Son of God? Have you come here to torment us before the time?”

~ Matthew 8:29, ESV

Over on The Insurgence Podcast, Michael Heiser and I recorded three episodes on spiritual warfare. We covered satan, demons, and principalities and powers.

Today’s Scriptural Game-Changer builds on those three episodes. (If you haven’t heard them recently, you can do so at the bottom of this article.)

A significant thread running through Jewish and early Christian thought is that many of the demonic spirits spoken of in Scripture, particularly those active after the Great Flood, were understood to be the disembodied spirits of the dead Nephilim (Genesis 6:1–4).

This idea is made explicit in the book of Jubilees, a Jewish text from the Second Temple period, composed around 170–150 BC.

The first-century Jewish historian Josephus, in his Jewish Antiquities, draws on traditions closely paralleling those found in Jubilees. This likely reflects shared access to common traditions circulating in Second Temple Judaism.

According to Jubilees (10:1–11), when the floodwaters recede and the Nephilim are destroyed, their spirits do not simply vanish. Instead, a figure named Mastema, who is the “chief of the spirits,” comes before God to plead on their behalf.

In the book of Jubilees, Mastema is functionally identified with satan. Jubilees 10:11 refers to the remaining spirits being “subject before satan on the earth,” using the names interchangeably.

Mastema is the adversarial leader of evil spirits, and Jubilees gives him the role that later Christian language assigns to satan/the devil. Throughout, Jubilees casts Mastema and his spirits as powers that mislead, accuse, and destroy, which are characteristics of satan.

According to the story, Mastema asks that a portion of the spirits be allowed to remain on the earth rather than be imprisoned in the place of condemnation. The full text of Jubilees 10:8 reads:

“Lord Creator, leave some of them before me; let them listen to me and do everything that I tell them, for if some are not left to me, I shall not be able to execute the power of my will on the sons of men; for these are for corruption and leading astray before my judgment, for great is the wickedness of the sons of men.”

God grants this request, permitting one-tenth of the Nephilim spirits to remain active under Mastema’s authority, while the other nine-tenths are bound and cast into the place of confinement to await final judgment. (We have references to these spirits in 2 Peter and Jude.)

Woven into this arrangement is a kind of theodicy, an explanation for why God permits demonic spirits to operate in the world at all. Their corrupting influence serves as an instrument within God’s larger purpose. (In Appendix 1 of my book, Hang On, Let Go, I explain the role of God and satan in the trials that we Christians face.)

Now here’s the game-changing insight. Echoes of this story appear in the Gospels.

According to Jubilees, these spirits were told, in effect, that they were permitted to work until the Last Judgment, at which point they would face their final reckoning.

This background illuminates something otherwise puzzling in the account of the Gadarene demoniac (Matthew 8:28–34; Mark 5:1–20; Luke 8:26–39).

When Jesus approaches and begins to cast out the demons, they cry out: “What do you want with us, Son of God? Have you come here to torment us before the appointed time?” (Matthew 8:29).

The phrase “before the time” carries weight in light of the Jubilees tradition. The demons are essentially protesting that their agreed-upon reprieve isn’t over yet.

Jesus then grants their request to enter a herd of pigs which rush down a steep bank and drown in the sea (Matthew 8:32).

Separately, Luke notes that the demons had been begging Jesus not to send them into the abyss (Luke 8:31), the place of imprisonment where the other Nephilim spirits were confined.

The connection between that feared destination and the fate of these spirits ties the Gospel account back into this wider Jewish cosmology.

In addition, there are two deeper dimensions to this story.

1) The demons try to get Jesus to operate on the ground that He is the Son of God. They were essentially saying, “You have no right to cast us out as the Son of God.” But Jesus didn’t cast out demons (or do any other works) in His capacity as the Son of God.

He did them in His capacity as the Son of Man. He lived and acted as a human anointed by the Holy Spirit. He acted as the Second Adam, a human being carrying God’s authority.

“How God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and power, and how he went around doing good and healing all who were under the power of the devil, because God was with him.”

~ Acts 10:38

This throws back to God’s Eternal Purpose where God gave His authority to man—humans—to exercise His authority over the creeping things (the serpent).

As the Son of Man, which means “Son of Adam,” Jesus was acting as the New Adam, carrying out the tasks that Adam failed to fulfill.

It is for this reason that the disciples of Jesus recorded in the book of Acts did all the same things that Jesus did. They were all fallen humans, yet they cast out demons, healed the sick, and performed miracles—doing the works of Jesus Himself.

And that same authority has been given to us today who follow Christ.

As the Son of Man, Jesus is our model for life and ministry.

2) The name “Jesus” is the Greek form of the Hebrew name “Joshua” (Yeshua).

In the book of Joshua, Joshua leads Israel into the promised land and wages war against the giant clans, the Anakim and Rephaim, likely connected in the tradition to the Nephilim line (Numbers 13:33; Deuteronomy 2:10–11; Joshua 11:21–22).

Joshua’s campaign is, in effect, a purging of the land from these corrupted bloodlines and the spiritual darkness associated with them.

In the Gospels, Jesus enters the land as the true and greater Joshua, doing what the first Joshua only partially accomplished. That is, He is purging not merely the physical descendants but the spirits themselves.

Demons are still operating today, and God has given us who are in Christ complete authority over them. If you listen to the episodes I did with Heiser, we discuss all of this in detail. I even tell a dramatic story of casting out a demon from a person when I was in my 20s. Plus UFOs and AI. In addition, there’s a bonus episode called “How to Defend Yourself Against Alien Abduction,” which is part serious, part spoof.

Again, today’s piece is a supplement to those episodes. So give them a listen.

Also on The Insurgence Podcast, we recently dropped “The Title Deed of the Earth” Parts 1 and 2 where John Nugent and I discuss Revelation chapter 5.

Enjoy.

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