William Finck Answers Don Spears on His “SATAN is Still in Heaven” Theory

The Gospel of Luke, Chapter 5 – Christogenea on Talkshoe, June 22nd, 2012 (in part): Last week discussing Luke chapter 4, it was made evident in more than one way that the “devil” of the temptation of Christ was most certainly an actual person. While many may believe that Satan is still in heaven, as the Romish Catholics would like for us to believe, Christ said “I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven”, and He was speaking in the past tense. It is clear that He intended the past tense, since He then proceeded to liken certain people in first century Palestine as serpents and scorpions, thereby relating them to Satan just as the vision in Revelation chapter 12 describes Satan. In that chapter, the Revelation says that Satan, “that old Serpent” who is also the devil – which is representative of all those who took part in that original rebellion against God – was cast out of heaven, that his place in heaven was found no longer, and that he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him. Since Satan is “that old serpent”, this has already happened long ago, before the events of Genesis chapter 3, and no creative interpretation of any other Scripture may turn these words of Christ into a lie. Satan walks amongst us, in the form of his seed - as Genesis 3:15 attests - and he has done so ever since he was cast out and our Adamic race was created. The devil is not in heaven, but in his dominance of our world it is evident that he does try to create his own perverted version of heaven.

The An Evening With Don Spears – Christogenea on Talkshoe, July 7th, 2012: Here is my answer to this conversation with Don Spears. It is necessary because Don really did not want to actually discuss the finer points of the Scriptures which he cited concerning Satan during the conversation which we had on this issue, but rather he sought only to get his own points across, none of which he convinced me of, and this response will illustrate why he failed. - William Finck

(This was originally published as part of the Luke Chapter 8 presentation of July 13th, 2011 by William Finck)
 

Don is a dear friend and a good brother, and I really and honestly did not want to try to beat up on him in a debate, especially since I would have had to out-yell him to get a word in, a situation made even more difficult because I was a guest in his home at the very time of the discussion. So I basically left it to him to convince me that Satan was in heaven, which he believes, and in the end I am not convinced. Don insists that Satan is in heaven, and he says that if I do not understand that, then, as he insists, I do not understand the spiritual things of God. Yet in the passage he referred to, Paul was talking about the things of God, and not about the things of Satan which are in opposition to God.

Don really and truly believes in the divine inspiration of what he calls the “English bible”, ostensibly the King James Version, and only looks at and observes the Greek when it is convenient for him to do so. That attitude allows Don to define which of the English understandings he likes and which ones he does not like, in spite of the meanings of the Greek words or the Greek grammar in the readings he likes. His defense of this is accompanied by cries for conformity, but conformity means nothing if it is a forced conformity which in any place in Scripture leaves ideas that are contrary to the language at the time when the words were written. For instance, Don made a point of discussing an obscure topic, the Greek word as it appears in Jude and in Paul. Both writers used this Greek word to describe a habitation, so Don insists that they must be talking about habitations of an identical nature. Yet Don would not let me define the Greek word for air as it applies in the understanding of first century literature, because it is convenient to his Satan-in-heaven theory not to define it, since the Adversary was called the “prince of the power of the air” by Paul. Don wants to equate the air with the heaven, or some part of the heaven, although the Greek words are clearly different. In the Greek cosmology there are three layers of atmosphere, the , the , and the . The air is the immediate atmosphere, and the  is the heaven. The word  describes the bright upper  and the words are sometimes interchangeable. But the air is not the heaven. If Satan is the prince of the power of the , and not of the , then Satan is not at all in heaven! In Don’s world, two habitations must be identical, because they are described by the same word, and yet air and heaven, or some part of heaven, must be identical and it is useless to see that they are described by different words, but in reality they do indeed mean two different things. While this is all merely semantics, it is Don who raised these points, but his view on the issue contains some strange logic, which does not prove his case upon close inspection.

The entire argument that there is still a Satan in heaven, contrary to the words of Christ in the Revelation, rests on three premises, and yes, they are premises. The first premise is that the phrase “the host of the high ones” in Isaiah chapter 24 refers to satanic spirits in heaven. If we have to misapply the so-called “law” of first mention to phrases, rather than to doctrines, then the first time the phrase “high ones” is used in Scripture is in Isaiah chapter 10, where it apparently applies to people, and not to angels in heaven. Here in Isaiah chapter 24, the word would only apply to angels in heaven at anyone’s insistence, and there is nothing which compels me to follow such an insistence when interpreting the phrase. I would instead interpret it to refer to the wealthiest merchants, bankers and king-makers, which are those who really rule over Society.

The second premise is that the reference to gods in the 82nd Psalm refers to angels in heaven. Don Spears insists this is true even though Christ Himself tells us explicitly at John 10: 34-35 that this applies to those men to whom the Word of God came. When I pointed this out to Don, he called this the “Judeo-Christian interpretation”, which is an ad hominem statement attempting to discredit the plain word of Scripture. In truth, even Judeo-Christianity is not wrong about everything, and I will accept the plain word of Scripture over the insistence of men. If Don had really wanted to discuss these Psalms, rather than try to run over me with them, he would have slowed down and listened to my explanations. For instance, where the King James has “men” in Psalm 82:7, in Hebrew the word is singular not plural, and it should be read “Adam”. As Paul says, it is appointed for man once to die, and then the judgment (Hebrews 9:27). In Romans 8:17, where Paul says that “in the transgression of one, death has taken reign through that one”, he spoke of that same Adam. Don’s further arguments concerning the phrase “sons of the mighty”, or “sons of God”, in the 89th Psalm are directly related to this one. The plain word of Scripture is that Adam is the son of God (Luke 3:38) and that the children of Adam, and of course the children of Israel, are indeed the children of God (Deuteronomy 14:1, Acts 17:28). Therefore the phrase “sons of God” in the Psalms applies to the children of Israel, and not at all to angels in heaven, as Yahshua Himself has told us in John chapter 10:34 where He said “Is it not written in your law that ‘I have said, Ye are gods’? ³⁵ If He spoke of them as gods to whom the Word of Yahweh had come, and the writing is not able to be broken, ³⁶ He whom the Father has sanctified and sent into the Society, you tell that ‘You blaspheme’, because I said I am a son of Yahweh?” Likewise, the assembly of the “sons of God” in chapter 1 of the Book of Job was not in heaven, but on earth, where both Satan and Job were, as the book also tells us explicitly.

Now there are in Scripture little-discussed and little-understood correlations between the children of Adam and the angels in heaven, in that there were, ostensibly, children of God existing in heaven before the foundation of the world – as Job 38:7 seems to reveal. However this alone does not refute the perspective supplied here, nor prove anything concerning the 82nd or 89th Psalms or Job chapter 1, and none of it has anything at all to do with angels cast out of heaven following their rebellion against God. Christ says in Matthew 22:30 that the children of the resurrection shall be as the angels, or like the angels, not that they will be angels. Paul later says that the Saints shall judge angels, not that they will be angels. So there must remain differences between men and angels. If there were not, then the event of Genesis chapter 6 may hardly have been seen as a violation of the law of kind after kind, and cannot have been compared by Christ to the race-mixing of modern times.

In light of the plain word of Scripture which tells us explicitly who the sons or children of God are, which has many Scriptural witnesses (Deuteronomy 14:1, Luke 3:38, Acts 17:28, Isaiah 43:6), we can then examine the third premise: that the Masoretic Text is correct in its reading of Genesis 6:1-4, which calls those angels who mingled with the daughters of Adam (who is the son of God) the “sons of God”. Rather, as we have pointed out in the past here and in our papers at Christogenea, it is likely that the correct reading of Genesis 6 as it is in some Septuagint manuscripts and in the Enoch literature which Don Spears himself likes to cite, may indeed be “sons of heaven”, and not “sons of God”, and once that is realized then any apparent conflict which that verse has with all of the plain statements concerning the “sons of God” in scripture simply disappears.

Now I have no doubts that Don Spears is a good man, and that he means well, and that he has pure intentions. However on Saturday he did make some ad hominem assaults on both my spirituality and upon my methods of Scriptural interpretation, which I must now address. I am certain that he did this with no ill intention towards me, and I do consider him a good and beloved brother, however he did it nonetheless.

Don apparently believes that I free-wheel my interpretations of Scripture, in spite of the fact that I have indeed outlined my methods of interpretation in papers in my writings. For example, there is the paper I wrote for the Christogenea forum some time ago entitled On Biblical Exegesis, which I also presented in a program here a year ago. As I also said several weeks ago here in my Luke chapter 4 presentation, Christ came to reveal things kept secret since the foundation of the world. In addition to this, the scribes having turned the Word of God into a lie as we read in Jeremiah 8:8, referring to at least some places in the Books of the Law, therefore the words of Christ and the apostles in the New Testament must be the lens through which we examine the Old Testament. While passages in the New Testament cannot be taken out of context in order to refute the Old Testament, on the other hand we cannot not use any understanding of Old Testament ideas, inferences or allusions to refute plain statements in the New Testament. This in some places may defy the so-called “law” of first mention, but that law is a law of man, and not of God. It may work in a world which has a perfect Bible, but our Bible itself mentions its own imperfection and its own incomplete state. I do not build doctrines on inference and premise. Rather, I strive to build doctrine on plain and explicit statements, with two or three witnesses, and from there interpret the parables and prophecies which align with those statements, and not the other way around. So, for example, if there are two or three explicit statements which tell me that the children of Adam are the children of God, then no other reference to the “sons of God” in any context will convince me that it is talking about angels rather than about the children of Adam. There are actually at least three explicit statements to that effect in each testament, which proves that the children of Adam are the sons and daughters of God. There is not one explicit statement in any Scripture which states that angels and fallen angels are the “sons of God”, as Don Spears would like to read at Psalms 82 and 89, which he claims reference for Satan still in heaven. Doctrines are not based on inference alone.

Don talked at length on Saturday about the need to follow the traditional methods of Scriptural interpretation. Yet Don himself also claims that Christian Identity truth is discovered with those traditional methods of interpretation from the King James Version alone, without any necessity to learn other languages and to inspect the source documents. If any of the early Christian writers, and if any of the major schools of recent times had ever arrived at the truth using those traditional methods of interpretation which were devised by scholars, then perhaps I would see merit in them. But they have never arrived at the truth through those methods, and they reject that truth today even when it is shown to them. Rather, those methods bind men to laws which have been devised by man, not by God, and I see them as the systemization of deception. I shall not be bound by the laws of man respecting the Word of God. Don has learned the Israel Identity truth, yet he clings to those old ways which have never discovered the truth. He insists upon pouring new wine into old bottles.

Criticizing his estimation of my spirituality, Don claims that I do not want to believe anything which I cannot perceive with my fleshly senses. That is likewise his own fleshly perception of my spirituality. I believe in all things Spiritual which are described by the Word of God. And I also believe that the Spirit operates in us, as the Word of God says, and that how we perceive the physical world and what we do in it is driven by the Spirit in us, when we put away the deeds and desires of the flesh. Although I may fail, I strive to reflect the things of my spirit into the physical world, but I do not imagine the Spiritual world to be like the physical. The prayer we are taught to pray is that things be on earth as they already are in heaven, and that is my prayer indeed – so I cannot believe that there is a Satan in heaven! If there is a Satan in heaven, then God is a failure, because His Word states that “neither was their place found any more in heaven” and He asks us to pray that things may be “on earth as they are in heaven”. If I cannot apply the things of my Spirit in order to understand and evaluate the world around me, what I see and feel and hear and touch, then the Word of God is of no use to me in this world.

This leads me to the next item which requires discussion. It amazes me, and I have seen this same thing happen many times, how two men can read the same Scripture and understand plain words in an entirely different manner. On Saturday Don cited Titus 3:5 insisting that our Adamic Spirit is not with us from birth, in refutation of what I understand and expressed when reading the plain words of 1 Corinthians 15:44, in conjunction with Genesis 2:7, 2 Corinthians 4:7 and other passages. Don stated, and I will only paraphrase, that it is the Holy Spirit in us which receives the washing of regeneration and renewal that Paul describes in his letter to Titus. Yet I read Titus 3:5 and understand that it is the Holy Spirit which is performing that washing of regeneration and renewal! If the Spirit is Holy, it has no need of washing! It is the Holy Spirit which performs the cleansing of our Adamic spirits, and the Holy Spirit itself does not need to be cleansed. From the Wisdom of Solomon, 2:23: “For God created man to be immortal, and made him to be an image of his own eternity.” As Paul says, speaking of Israel, if there is a physical body, which we are sown, then there is a spiritual body, which we are raised – and those are his words. Even the spirits of those who sinned before the flood were never extinguished, as Peter tells us that Christ during His three days in the earth proclaimed the Gospel “to those spirits in prison, who at one time had been disobedient”. We must dispense with the old leaven, and reconcile all of Scripture.

In the presentation of Luke chapter 4 given here several weeks ago, I made the comment that I have never seen any Scriptural evidence of a wicked demon spirit interacting with men unless the spirit was embodied, and I offered to be shown such evidence. That offer still stands. Don Spears attempted to meet my offer by citing 1 Kings chapter 22, a story recounted in 2 Chronicles chapter 18. The following account is lengthy, but it must be read in context.

1 Kings chapter 22:13-25: “¹³ And the messenger that was gone to call Micaiah spake unto him, saying, Behold now, the words of the prophets declare good unto the king with one mouth: let thy word, I pray thee, be like the word of one of them, and speak that which is good. ¹⁴ And Micaiah said, As the Lord liveth, what the Lord saith unto me, that will I speak. ¹⁵ So he came to the king. And the king said unto him, Micaiah, shall we go against Ramothgilead to battle, or shall we forbear? And he answered him, Go, and prosper: for the Lord shall deliver it into the hand of the king. ¹⁶ And the king said unto him, How many times shall I adjure thee that thou tell me nothing but that which is true in the name of the Lord? ¹⁷ And he said, I saw all Israel scattered upon the hills, as sheep that have not a shepherd: and the Lord said, These have no master: let them return every man to his house in peace. ¹⁸ And the king of Israel said unto Jehoshaphat, Did I not tell thee that he would prophesy no good concerning me, but evil? ¹⁹ And he said, Hear thou therefore the word of the Lord: I saw the Lord sitting on his throne, and all the host of heaven standing by him on his right hand and on his left. ²⁰ And the Lord said, Who shall persuade Ahab, that he may go up and fall at Ramothgilead? And one said on this manner, and another said on that manner. ²¹ And there came forth a spirit, and stood before the Lord, and said, I will persuade him. ²² And the Lord said unto him, Wherewith? And he said, I will go forth, and I will be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets. And he said, Thou shalt persuade him, and prevail also: go forth, and do so. ²³ Now therefore, behold, the Lord hath put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these thy prophets, and the Lord hath spoken evil concerning thee. ²⁴ But Zedekiah the son of Chenaanah went near, and smote Micaiah on the cheek, and said, Which way went the Spirit of the Lord from me to speak unto thee? ²⁵ And Micaiah said, Behold, thou shalt see in that day, when thou shalt go into an inner chamber to hide thyself.”

It is evident that Yahweh God communicated to the prophets in visions, and while those visions had meaning, they were not to be taken literally. In the passage from 1 Kings chapter 22 above, the personification of the lying spirit is an allegory used as a rhetorical device, just as Wisdom is personified in the Proverbs (i.e. 1:20). The personification of the lying spirit is no more literal than the “sheep that have not a shepherd” in the preceding verses. In truth, this is fully evident in verse 23 where the allegory is summarized and it says “the Lord hath put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these thy prophets”. The evil spirit is not one of the fallen angels, nor is it one of the demons. Rather, it is an evil spirit sent upon these particular men from God Himself. Another instance of such an occurrence is found in 1 Samuel 16:23: “And it came to pass, when the evil spirit from God was upon Saul, that David took an harp, and played with his hand: so Saul was refreshed, and was well, and the evil spirit departed from him.” Don Spears failed to notice the difference between an evil spirit - a spirit which is evil in the eyes of men and which is sent by God to accomplish the will of God - and a Satanic angel or demon spirit which is in a state of rebellion and which is opposed to God, and there is a huge difference indeed. Evil spirits from God are not Satanic spirits adversarial to God.

Don also mentioned that the laying on of hands was not prophesied in the Old Testament, and he is right. But there is a type for it in the Old Testament, for instance in Leviticus 4:15 where it says “And the elders of the congregation shall lay their hands upon the head of the bullock before the Lord: and the bullock shall be killed before the Lord.” Now there is no longer any sacrifice for sin, except that the individual members of the Body of Christ should sacrifice themselves for their kinsmen by serving their kinsmen, as Christ sacrificed Himself for our sakes. Therefore we lay our hands no longer upon the bullock to be sacrificed, but upon each other because we should dedicate our lives to one another, for we are the body of Christ. At least that is my opinion, for what it is worth.