EVENING SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 12/04/2025/6:45
PM
My
Worship Time Focus:
PT-2“The Case of
the Fallen Angels”
Bible
Reading & Meditation Reference: 2
Peter 2:4
Message of the verses: “For if God did not spare angels
when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to pits of
darkness, reserved for judgment;”
We
begin this evening’s SD by first of all talking about the phrase “cast them
into hell” which is actually the translation of a single word, tartarosas. “The verb, used only here” writes MacArthur
who goes on to write “in the New Testament, is derived from Tartarus, which
is in Greek mythology identified as subterranean abyss that was even lower than
Hades (hell). Tartarus came to refer to
the abode of the most wicked spirits, where the worst rebels and criminals
received the severest divine punishment.
Much like Jesus used the term Gehenna (the name for Jerusalem’s
garbage dump, where fires burned continuously) to illustrate the inextinguishable
torments of eternal anguish (Matt. 5:22, 29-30; 10:28; 19:9; 23:15, 33; Mark
9:43, 45, 47; Luke 12:5), Peter used a familiar word from popular Greek thought
to designate hell. The pseudepigraphal
book of 1 Enoch, a well-known work to most New Testament Jews (cf. Jude
14), also mentions Tartarus (1:9). Peter
must have been confident that his readers understood exactly what he meant,
since he offered them no additional explanation of the term.” I for one am
happy with the research that MacArthur did on this subject so that I can better
understand it myself and also pass the information along to all those who read
my Spiritual Diaries on my blogs.
“Further,
Peter describes this demonic incarceration by saying that God committed the
fallen angels to pits of darkness.
Committed (paredoken), as in Acts 8:3; and 12:4, means to
turn over the imprisonment. Pits of darkness (cf. Matt. 8:12) is the
best translation, even though some ancient manuscripts read ‘chains’ (hence the
King James translation). Whether the
rendering is pits or ‘chains,’ the idea is the same—it refers to loss of
freedom in a place of confinement, a fate demons feared (cf. Matt. 8:29; Luke
8:31). Those who were sent there were reserved
for judgment, like guilty prisoners awaiting final sentencing and execution
at the las day (cf. Rev. 20:10).
“But
two important questions still arise from the text: To which fallen angels does this action
refer? And what did they do to deserve
such severe imprisonment? What Peter does not expand on, Jude does:
“And
angels who did not keep their own domain, but abandoned their proper abode, He
has kept in eternal bonds under darkness for the judgment of the great day,
just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities around them, since they in the same
way as these indulged in gross immorality and went after strange flesh, are
exhibited as an example in undergoing the punishment of eternal fire. (Jude
6-7).
Those demons ‘did not keep their own domain,’ meaning
that they moved out of their proper sphere of existence and behavior—‘their
proper abode.’ Jude 6 is a reference to the events of Genesis 6:1-4 in
which certain fallen angels possessed mortal men and then cohabited with
women. The egregious transgression of
those demons was a clear violation of the boundaries God had set for them. Jude 7 compares their ‘gross immorality’ to
that of Sodom and Gomorrah who ‘went after strange flesh’ (i.e. ,
practiced homosexuality, a perversion which God wholly condemns—Lev. 18:22;
20:13; Rom. 1:26-27; 1 Cor. 6:9).” Now
recently I studied the book of Jude before moving onto the book of 2 Peter and
I wrote some similar things that are in this portion above while studying Jude.
“Of
course, Peter’s primary purpose here was not to get lost in the details of this
account about fallen angels, especially since his readers were apparently
already familiar with it. Instead, he
used this illustration to emphasize the main thrust of his argument—namely, that
God severely judges all those who oppose Him and His truth. Like those angels, rebellious false teachers
will face divine wrath.”
I have discussed this issue with demons cohabitating
with women, which MacArthur states happened before the flood, and he also
states that this is one of the reasons that God destroyed the earth by a flood
saving only Noah and his wife, his sons and their wives, seven in all. The reason he makes this issue is that if
demons were really cohabiting with women then their offspring would not be a
part of the human race, and therefore Christ would not have been able to save
these beings because He is both God and Man.
12/4/2025 7:20 PM
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