Angels Vs. Demons

Today kicks off Angels and Demons Week. I’ve added a new poll over on the side, so be sure to check it out! I thought I would start out by discussing what angels and demons are (from my perspective.) I also want to give you a little bit of my religious background because it affects how I view both of these things.

I was raised in a pretty conservative Christian home. I grew up learning about heaven, hell, and everything in between. While I’m much less conservative now, I’m still inclined to believe that angels and demons are real beings. I’ve heard literally hundreds of stories over the years about people seeing, talking to, and interacting with these spiritual forces. I also understand that there’s a lot out there that we don’t understand yet. So it isn’t too hard for me to accept that they are real. When I talk about angels or demons on this blog, it will be from a Christian perspective.

Now that you know where I’m coming from, let’s talk a little about them. The story I was always told growing up was fairly simply.

God created angels to assist him.(The term angel actually means messenger.) One angel, Satan, was the most beautiful and powerful angel in heaven, but he started to think that he was better than God. So, he convinced a large number of angels to join him in a rebellion. God was angry, and threw Satan and the other angels to Earth and forbid them from entering heaven. The angels that fell with Satan, are what we call demons. They look and behave as angels do. They have the same powers and problems. The only difference is they no longer follow the will of God.

So when I talk about angels or demons on here, I’m really talking about the same thing.

I actually got curious about the fall of Satan story I was told as a child and decided to look it up, because I couldn’t remember actually reading about it anywhere in the Bible.

I did a bit of research and found that there are only a handful of verses that talk about it.  

Luke 10:18 says “And he said to them, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven.” There are also several verses in Revelation that mention the fall. Revelation 12:9 says “And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world-he was thrown down to the Earth, and his angels were thrown down with him.” Some people believe that the verses about Satan in Revelation are actually predictions about what is going to happen in the future. There’s actually quite a bit of debate about the details of the story.

I think a lot of the little details of Satan’s fall are probably oral traditions that have been expanded on over the years and passed down from generation to generation. Either way, it’s easy to find moral lessons in the story.

Do you think demons are just fallen angels or do you think they are something else? What do you think about the story?