Where Did Demons Come From?
The Bible does not say where demons came from. Some preachers are quite sure of their answers to this question, but it’s difficult to be dogmatic about something when the Bible says little about it.
For example, the Bible is not dogmatic about the issue of whether buying a lottery ticket is a sin. Personally, I think it’s a total waste of money because the math is against you. You’d be better off putting that money into an offering, in which case God guarantees you multiplication. So I’ve never bought a lottery ticket, but I’ve given in a lot of offerings. Then again, I’ve bought and sold things in financial markets, and someone could say that doing so is just another form of gambling. The Bible does not discuss lottery tickets, so you can’t preach that the purchase of one is sinful unless the buyer’s reason is that he doesn’t trust God to prosper him and thus puts all his hope in the “luck system” instead. My opinion is just my opinion, and you are free to disagree because neither of us has Scripture to back us. (I’m aware that many churches preach that any form of gambling is a sin, unless you are buying a raffle ticket to benefit the youth group, in which case it’s suddenly OK.) It’s the same with many “Is it a sin?” questions. If the Bible doesn’t discuss the matter, you risk being like the Pharisees who added a lot of their own laws to God’s laws. Some Christians do the same with “no golfing on Sunday, no swimming on Sunday, etc.” man-made rules that are not imposed anywhere in the Bible.
Because there is nothing explicit on the matter of the origin of demons in Scripture, we can ask ourselves if there is anything in Scripture that would HINT at their origin.
One popular theory is that demons are fallen angels who rebelled with Lucifer. However, demons seek to inhabit people and angels never do that anywhere in Scripture. So it is hard to accept that a demon is just a bad angel. Besides, Jude 6 says, “And the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day.” One could debate whether this was all angels who rebelled or just a certain class of angels who “left their own habitation,” perhaps angels in Genesis 6 who some people claim had intercourse with human women and produced giants, though that assertion is shaky, as we’ll see. Since I brought that up, I’ll bring up that other people assert that Genesis 6 only refers to children of Seth and children of Cain intermarrying. Is there anything to prove or disprove either? Proponents of the procreating angels theory cite the fact that angels appear to be referred to as the “sons of God” in Job.
Job 2:1:
Again there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan came also among them to present himself before the LORD.
Job 38:7:
When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?
But then we have to deal with this verse:
Mark 12:25:
For when they shall rise from the dead, they neither marry, nor are given in marriage; but are as the angels which are in heaven.
This seems to indicate that angels do not marry. If you really look at this closely, it doesn’t say that explicitly – it says that risen PEOPLE don’t marry, AND that they are “as the angels.” That could be taken to mean that angels in heaven don’t marry, but there’s an easier proof of that. If these angels are still in heaven, they certainly don’t get married because God is against same-sex “marriage” and all angels referred to in Scripture are male! If an angel “married” a woman on the earth, it would not be a marriage either; it would be an illicit relationship. But Genesis never proves that any of the “sons of God” married a woman; it says that they had intercourse with them, which of course was illicit.
Genesis 6:4:
There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.
All major translations are similar to the KJV above for purposes of this discussion.
Now someone is probably about to write to me to tell me that I’ve missed the obvious two verses earlier, when it says that the “sons of God” took WIVES, not illicit concubines. “See, they DID marry women, so you’re wrong!”
Genesis 6:2:
That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose.
However, the Hebrew word issa, while it can mean wife, is also used in contexts where it can only mean woman but not a wife. There are 425 cases where it was translated wife but 324 other cases where it was translated woman. So one could say that the “wife” interpretation has about a 4:3 advantage, but that is far short of being any conclusive proof. However, this IS a passage that some consider a proof that the “sons of God” were actually “sons of Seth” instead of angels.
Another problem is the phrase “after that.” We see here that there were already giants on the earth before the “sons of God” bore children with the daughters of men, which disproves that the giants had to be the product of human-angelic intercourse. This doesn’t disprove that such unions produced giants, but it proves that there were giants before this mysterious event who were NOT the result of humans and angels having children together. So it was not necessary to believe in human-angelic intercourse to believe that there were giants.
So now, back to the idea of demons being fallen angels.
We know that there are spirits kept in prison because Jesus preached to the spirits in prison, and as mentioned elsewhere in this book, “prison” would not have been an apt definition for Abraham’s Bosom. (Also, these were non-human spirits, as proved in What Happened Between the Cross and the Throne?.) So I will allow that perhaps some of the other fallen angels are now the “principalities and powers” described in Scripture that are NOT in chains yet. But demons are not spoken of interchangeably with these principalities and powers, so even if principalities and powers are fallen angels (and the Bible doesn’t tell us that explicitly either), that wouldn’t prove that demons are fallen angels. Nothing in Scripture equates demons with fallen angels, even though “demons are fallen angels” is probably the most popular theory about the origin of demons.
In fact, another angle that hurts the “demons are fallen angels” theory is that Jesus said that hell was created for “the devil and his angels,” not “the devil and his demons,” (Matthew 25:41), though it is clear that the devil’s angels are fallen angels. We see the same thing in the verse below:
Revelation 12:9:
And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.
Again, it doesn’t say that his demons were cast out into the earth, which would not make sense, because demons are on the earth already! This would more properly refer to the principalities and powers that Paul referred to.
For the “fallen angel” theory to work, you must assert that these fallen angels are NOT the ones in hell in chains of darkness, as explicitly stated in 2 Peter 2:4:
2 Peter 2:4:
For if God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment;
Interestingly, this place where the fallen angels are is called Tartarus in the Greek and is the only verse in the Bible to use that this word instead of the more common words Hades and Gehenna associated with hell.
Therefore, for demons to be fallen angels, you would have to assert (and I’ve seen it asserted) that 2 Peter 2:4 is only metaphorical and that these fallen angels are judged but are still roaming the earth. But you are on shaky ground to say the least if you claim that a Scripture that plainly states something is metaphorical, unless you can prove from OTHER Scripture that it is only a metaphor. Given that the only other related Scripture is Jude 6 above, which confirms a literal understanding of 2 Peter 2:4, I have to reject the idea that 2 Peter 2:4 is only metaphorical.
Then there is this potentially problematic passage:
Acts 23:8-9:
For the Sadducees say that there is no resurrection, neither angel, nor spirit: but the Pharisees confess both.
And there arose a great cry: and the scribes that were of the Pharisees’ part arose, and strove, saying, We find no evil in this man: but if a spirit or an angel hath spoken to him, let us not fight against God.
The issue is that if evil spirits are not fallen angels, why would a distinction have to made between angels and spirits? Keep in mind that this includes a quote by unbelievers that is not necessarily grounds for doctrine any more than Job’s untrue statements should be necessary grounds for doctrine.
In the case of the first of the two verses, one could explain that the Sadducees didn’t’ believe in immortal human spirits, which we already know from other Scriptures. However, the use of the same word spirit in the second of the two verses could invalidate that interpretation. They may have believed in error that a “ghost” might have spoken to him. After all the disciples thought that Jesus might have been a “ghost” when we walked on the water. However, it is appointed for man once to die and later this the judgment (Hebrews 9:27), so there are no “ghosts” in that sense.
I don’t think this passage invalidates the fallen angel theory after all.
But there are problems with the “demons are fallen angels” theory. To paraphrase Winston Churchill on another topic, it may be the worst theory except for all the others!
We can immediately brush aside another theory that a demon is the spirit of an evil dead person, because it is appointed for a man to die once, and after that the judgment (Hebrews 9:27). Thus, any deceased person is now in heaven or hell – he is definitely NOT floating around as a “ghost” or a demon. (“Ghosts” are actually evil spirits, not departed people. Cultures that believe that dead ancestors hang around their houses unwittingly welcome these evil impostor spirits, with horrible consequences.)
Hebrews 9:27 therefore disproves yet another theory in the apocryphal “Book of Enoch” (or 1 Enoch depending on whom you listen to) that demons were the disembodied spirits of the “Nephilim” (giants) in Genesis 6. The spirits of dead people do not hang around the earth. This is an example of why apocryphal books are not valid sources of theology and this is a clear strike against the Book of Enoch that rightfully keeps it out of the biblical canon. Books that contradict the books in the real Bible do not belong in any Bible and are thus not validly referred to as “lost books of the Bible.”
We seem to be running out of possibilities. If demons aren’t dead people or fallen angels, what else could they be?
Certain famous preachers have advanced the idea that demons are disembodied holdovers from a “Pre-Adamite creation” that was wiped away by a flood between Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 1:2. This presupposes the so-called “gap theory” that there is a big “time gap” between Genesis 1:1 (“original creation”) and Genesis 1:2 (“re-creation”). This theory was originally proposed to try to “reconcile” science (particularly fossils of dinosaurs) with Scripture. So we need to look into this and see if perhaps their theory holds water and that demons could be pre-Adamite beings held over from the days of the dinosaurs.
On the surface, Genesis 1 certainly seems to describe an original creation done in 6 days. Is there any possible Bible evidence that this isn’t the case?
Isaiah 45:18:
For thus saith the LORD that created the heavens; God himself that formed the earth and made it; he hath established it, he created it not in vain, he formed it to be inhabited: I am the LORD; and there is none else.
The words in vain above are translated from the Hebrew word tohu, which is also translated without form in Genesis 1:2. It basically means waste. So is God saying that He didn’t create the earth without life when He first made it? If so, whatever life was there would have had to have been wiped out to get to the tohu state in Genesis 1:2.
Jeremiah 4:23-26:
I beheld the earth, and, lo, it was without form, and void; and the heavens, and they had no light.
I beheld the mountains, and, lo, they trembled, and all the hills moved lightly.
I beheld, and, lo, there was no man, and all the birds of the heavens were fled.
I beheld, and, lo, the fruitful place was a wilderness, and all the cities thereof were broken down at the presence of the LORD, and by his fierce anger.
Could this be describing a past civilization that had to be wiped out? Initially one might have the impression that Jeremiah was describing a judgment that happened while man was here, but if that were the case, it doesn’t seem possible that the earth was empty and there were no sun, moon and stars. So let’s pursue this some more.
One popular Pentecostal reference Bible states that the word “was” (the earth was void) in Genesis 1:2 really should be translated became, which would indicate that a non-void earth became void when some form a judgment made it void. So I browsed through a number of modern translations to see whether perhaps some translator had picked up on this and translated Genesis 1:2 to read that the earth became void as opposed to was void. My efforts were “in vain” because not one translation I could find (including Young’s Literal Translation) offered any support to the idea of that word meaning became.
So now it’s time to really dig in and see whether the Hebrew word hayah in Genesis 1:2 is ever translated become or became anywhere else. We find that 2 Samuel 7:24 reads, “…and thou, LORD, art become (hayah) their God. A slightly different variant of the word reads “thou art become” in Deuteronomy 27:9. So yes, it CAN be translated become. However, when you look at the dozens of passages where the Hebrew word hayah appears, not only does it NOT mean become most of the time, but it can be used for a number of meanings, including being, fainting, following, accomplishing, committing and coming. So building a castle on this rather rudimentary Hebrew word would be inadvisable, as the main use of the word would still leave Genesis 1:2 the way it is in all our Bibles. We’ll have to look elsewhere.
2 Peter 3:5-7:
For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water:
Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished:
But the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men.
So here the “world” perished. But in Noah’s flood, there was still vegetation left, so could this be speaking of a different flood? Peter talks about the “heavens and the earth which are now,” so doesn’t that indicate that there were PRIOR heavens and earth before the ones that are now? Food for thought, it would seem, but there is still the nagging suspicion that this verse really is talking about Noah’s flood. Isn’t there ANY other verse that could nail down this “recreation” theory more convincingly? Suddenly, we remember this verse:
Genesis 1:28:
And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.
Hmmm. God said to replenish the earth, and the only case in which you could REPLENISH anything would be if it had already been “plenished” to begin with.
We then find in Genesis 9:1 that God commanded Noah to replenish the earth using exactly the same Hebrew word.
Genesis 9:1:
And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth.
There the word replenish obviously fits, so to be consistent, it would seem that we have to apply that same meaning in Genesis 1:28!
So it seems that we have finally nailed this down, and that the famous preachers, who surely researched all of this before we did, actually figured out this mess before we did – demons must be holdovers from a pre-Adamite creation.
How could anyone logically argue with the airtight case we’ve just made?
Then we happen to read the following verse:
Revelation 21:1:
And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea.
Uh-oh. The “gap theory” presupposes that there was a first earth and a first heaven that were wiped out and that we live on the second earth, to be replaced by a third earth. But the verse above is clear that the first earth is the one being replaced by the final earth. So there could not have been a first and second earth, and our interpretation of 2 Peter 3:5-7 cannot be correct after all. Thus, it must really have been talking about Noah’s flood after all, which is what most people would assume when they read it.
Well, at least we have Genesis 1:28 to fall back on, right? We should revisit it just to make sure. Looking at many other translations, we can only find a couple other non-mainstream translations that follow the King James Version’s translation replenish. Notably, even the NKJV translates that word fill, as does almost every other translation in use today. It seems that most translators disagree with the King James rendering. As always, we should do our own research. So let’s see where the Hebrew word male that is translated replenish in the King James is used. The very first occurrence is in Genesis 1:22, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas…” Even the King James Version goes along with the word fill here instead of replenish, even though it’s the same word in the same chapter describing creation. A quick word count check shows that the word is translated fill 107 times, full 48 times and replenish only 7 times in the King James Version. Hebrew words are often tricky because of somewhat vague meanings – there are several other meanings associated with the same word, including consecrate and accomplish.
So the odds seem “stacked” against the word really meaning replenish.
The most thought-provoking of the 7 places where that Hebrew word (male) is translated replenish is used in the King James Version is Genesis 9:1 above. If it could really mean replenish there, why couldn’t it mean that in Genesis 1:28? So let’s browse through translations on THAT verse and see what we find. The results are that the translations are EXACTLY the same as in Genesis 1:28 – almost no one translates the word as replenish even in Genesis 9:1, and everyone translates the word the same way in both verses.
We get to thinking that fill would be a logical meaning for the word in both cases, but perhaps not so in the case of replenish the first time, given that the gap theory version of Genesis 1:28 now seems to run afoul of Revelation 21:1. Maybe this whole thing isn’t as clear-cut as we thought.
Then we consider the creation of the sun, the moon and the stars AFTER Genesis 1:2. Did God create an original earth without a sun, a moon or stars to light the place up? Perhaps His glory made them unnecessary for lighting purposes, as will be the case on the new earth. But that’s a place where there will be no sin. If there was sin on a Pre-Adamite earth, wouldn’t everything be dark and need illumination as the present earth does? Did the plants get their energy from the glory of God because photosynthesis would be impossible without the sun? Is that even possible? We look into this and find that biblically, not only is it possible, but it HAPPENED, because plants were created on the THIRD day, one day BEFORE the sun, moon and stars were created! There was LIGHT before then, but it was not coming from the sun, moon and stars. So that argument against the “gap theory” fails and we’re still uncertain about the merits of the gap theory.
We read notes by “gap theory” proponents who have been challenged with this very thing, and their answer is that the earth was dark because the sun, moon and stars were hidden, and their “creation” was just a re-revealing of what was already there. But wait a minute! God said that He made two great lights in Genesis 1:16, and when we look up that Hebrew word (asah), it does NOT carry the connotation of revealing something that has already been made. So either there was a sun-moon-and-star-less prior earth (which really seems to be a stretch), or the gap theory has to be wrong.
So what about 2 Peter 3:5-7, which seemed clear-cut? Maybe we should reconsider it in the light of Peter’s statement that men are willfully ignorant about the flood in question. Thus, they must have heard about it but rejected that account on purpose. Given that the “gap theory” was never proposed until recent times, how could anyone back then have been “willfully ignorant” of something that the Bible never even spells out explicitly and that no one was preaching back then? Even today, people might say, “I don’t believe in Noah’s flood,” but I doubt that any sinner ever went around saying, “I reject the Bible account of a flood before Adam that wiped out the pre-Adamites!” In fact, why would such a flood even bother them? It didn’t wipe out PEOPLE anyway! Noah’s flood, which DID wipe out people, would have been a warning to humanity in a way that a pre-Adam flood would not be.
Also, Peter said in that passage that it was by “the word of God” that the heavens and earth of old stood out of the water and in the water. It would seem that this would have to refer to what God spoke into existence in Genesis 1, as He would not have had to speak them into existence after Genesis 1:1 if they already existed.
So what about Jeremiah 4:23-26? Is there any clue in the context about what he meant in the verses in question? Let’s read back a verse to find out:
Jeremiah 4:22:
For my people is foolish, they have not known me; they are sottish children, and they have none understanding: they are wise to do evil, but to do good they have no knowledge.
So in context, this is a judgment on PEOPLE who are already on the earth, not on mysterious pre-Adamite beings.
Now let’s check what comes after the verse, at least after we’re done kicking ourselves for not looking at the context of a passage before drawing conclusions earlier:
Jeremiah 4:27-29:
For thus hath the LORD said, The whole land shall be desolate; yet will I not make a full end.
For this shall the earth mourn, and the heavens above be black: because I have spoken it, I have purposed it, and will not repent, neither will I turn back from it.
The whole city shall flee for the noise of the horsemen and bowmen; they shall go into thickets, and climb up upon the rocks: every city shall be forsaken, and not a man dwell therein.
Now it is clear that Jeremiah was prophesying about FUTURE events of judgment during a time when men will be on the earth, not PREVIOUS events of judgment before mankind was even around building cities. So Jeremiah’s prophecy in context doesn’t really support the gap theory, either.
But what about there being no light? That would still be the case if God sent thick clouds; Jeremiah didn’t say that there were no sun, moon or stars – only that there was no light. Go somewhere on an overcast night away far from any towns or cities and you’ll see no light, either. In fact, as I write this, I’m in such a location on an overcast night – and I’m looking out the windows at pitch blackness.
But what about the earth being without form or void? The part of the earth Jeremiah was describing would fit that description, but that doesn’t mean that he was prophesying about the whole earth. The idea that MAN was already around is indicated by the fact that he saw “no man” and the cities (which we could reasonably assume were man-built) were broken down. We see similar prophetic imagery in Joel 2:1-11, which certainly does not describe a pre-Adamite condition because it refers to a coming judgment. That passage says that the sun and moon will be dark and the stars will withdraw their shining, but it certainly doesn’t mean that the sun, moon and stars will cease to exist – it will just be “a day of darkness.”
We’re getting on really thin ice with this gap thing – can Isaiah 45:18 bail us out? When Isaiah said that God didn’t create the world empty, but rather to be inhabited, it occurs to us that this “creation” COULD refer to the totality of creation in Genesis 1, rather than parsing a pre-Adamite creation and a later one. In fact, if you read this verse without a prior bias toward the gap theory, that would seem to be all that Isaiah was saying.
So now let’s ask ourselves why the earth would have been wiped out, and the clear answer is that it would have to be judgment. Judgment only happens when there is sin. So how did sin get into the earth?
Romans 5:12:
Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned:
Now our “gap theory” seems to have not just a gap but a large crevasse in it! While Satan, who was sinful, was on the earth manifesting himself through a snake, sin would never have taken hold here if Adam had done his job and resisted Satan’s rebellious thoughts. The verse above says that sin entered into the world by one man, who was clearly Adam. Thus, we would have to conclude that before Adam’s sin, there was no sin on the earth. But then there would be no cause for judgment on the earth and an initial pre-Adamite flood!
Okay, but wouldn’t a flood have purged the earth of sin? NO! Noah’s flood did not purge the earth of sin and force sin to re-enter the earth through Noah and his family. Noah was already a fallen man because he had inherited Adam’s sinful nature. So a flood would not purge the earth of sin and its consequences. Thus, if there were sin in a pre-Adamite earth, sin would still be here after a flood and before Adam was created. That idea directly contradicts Romans 5:12 as well as the established fact that only blood, not a flood, can remove sin (Hebrews 9:22).
So the “gap theory” appears to be a bust after all, leaving a literal six-day creation, as traditionally believed, intact as the only alternative.
It would be possible to write a thousand-page book just about all the pseudo-science out there involving “evolution” and fossils and the like. In fact, someone already did that and I have the book, so I don’t need to duplicate that kind of work here. To me the biggest nail in the coffin of evolution is that a morally accountable, eternal spirit being could not “evolve” from non-morally accountable soul-and-body beings that don’t live forever. That’s just plain stupid. If your dog sleeps around with multiple dogs, it doesn’t go to doggie hell and become a hot dog. Man is the only creation described as being made in God’s image. Animals, which are not made in God’s image, could not have evolved into man, who is.
When we pastored our first church, we had a weekly event one year called Evolution Revolution where we invited local high school students to come and hear “the other side” of evolution theory. I mentioned to the students that someone had written a book proposing that bears started spending more time in the water and evolved into whales. Their reaction was something like, “That’s crazy, dude, how could anyone believe that?” I informed them that the man’s name was Charles Darwin and the book was called The Origin of Species. It was fun to watch their reactions. The idea was so ludicrous that Darwin himself took it out of later versions of his own book, though he replaced one silly conjecture with another as his views “evolved” (at least what he was willing to state publicly). Darwin’s foolish writings are the very kind of false “science” or “knowledge” that Paul warned about in 1 Timothy 6:20-21.
I also challenged them to get their earth science teacher to debate their chemistry teacher about what happens to hydrogen atoms in a vacuum. After all, an earth science teacher would probably tell you that they coalesce and form stars, while the chemistry teacher would probably tell you that they fly apart as much as possible in a vacuum to fill available space. They had never even noticed the contradiction between their classes.
Conclusion (Or Lack Thereof)
Anyway, what are we left with now? If these explanations for the origin of demons all have passages that might seem to support them, but all these explanations also have problems, where DID demons come from?
I don’t know for sure and neither do you. The Bible doesn’t tell us.
Therefore, it must not be something essential for us to know. We don’t have to know how they CAME; the important thing is that they have to GO at the name of Jesus.
Postscript: It’s OK Not to Know Everything
Did you know it’s OK not to know everything? Even Paul, who had perhaps more abundant revelations than anyone else, said, “I know in part” (1 Corinthians 13:12)! Even he said that if anyone thinks he knows anything, he knows nothing as he ought to know (1 Corinthians 8:2). This disproves the tempting thought that if we just study the Bible enough, we can eventually know everything. We will not know fully until the perfect has come (1 Corinthians 13:12 again), and that won’t be in this lifetime. That isn’t an excuse to stop learning more about the Word all the time, but if you think you know it all, we should all steer clear of you.