Who are the Demons??

[Bill the Cat]

Scripture Verse:

2 Peter 2:4
For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but sent them to hell, putting them into gloomy dungeons to be held for judgment;

I was always under the impression that the fallen angels were the demons, but from this passage, it seems that God has the fallen angels locked up in dungeons awaiting the judgement...

Little help??

[A Cup of No]

Scripture Verse:

2 Peter 2:4
For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but sent them to hell, putting them into gloomy dungeons to be held for judgment;

I was always under the impression that the fallen angels were the demons, but from this passage, it seems that God has the fallen angels locked up in dungeons awaiting the judgement...

Little help??

From what I've heard, and this might just be speculation, depending on how you interpret Genesis 6, the angels locked up for their sin are those who attempted to impregnate women in Genesis. This is the only idea I have about this and it's probably wrong!

[mossrose]

From what I've heard, and this might just be speculation, depending on how you interpret Genesis 6, the angels locked up for their sin are those who attempted to impregnate women in Genesis. This is the only idea I have about this and it's probably wrong!

Actually, ACoN, that is what I also understand to be the connection there between Peter and Genesis.

There are still lots of those other fallen angels floating around out there.....

[A Cup of No]

Scripture Verse:

2 Peter 2:4
For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but sent them to hell, putting them into gloomy dungeons to be held for judgment;

I was always under the impression that the fallen angels were the demons, but from this passage, it seems that God has the fallen angels locked up in dungeons awaiting the judgement...

Little help??

Hold on cop out answer. "lol I guess it's one of those things we'll find out when we get to heaven. I mean, if we knew everything, we'd be God, right?!"



Sorry, personal rant. I'll go see if I can find anything in the commentaries.

[Cowthulu]

From Enoch.

[Chapter 19]

1 And Uriel said to me: 'Here shall stand the angels who have connected themselves with women, and their spirits assuming many different forms are defiling mankind and shall lead them astray into sacrificing to demons as gods, (here shall they stand,) till the day of the great judgement in 2 which they shall be judged till they are made an end of. And the women also of the angels who 3 went astray shall become sirens.' And I, Enoch, alone saw the vision, the ends of all things: and no man shall see as I have seen.

Hard to tell from the way the first sentence reads.

[Sparko]

doesn't say "all the angels that sinned"

possibilities:

Maybe some are imprisoned and some are not, or maybe they get out for vacation.


--
edited to add:

I did some checking with esword and the word "hell" is not "gehenna" but "tartarus" which means a place of holding or prison and is not used anywhere else in the NT. The commentaries also made comment that the phrase "commited them to chains of darkness (ESV)" can mean the delivering them into the guilt and darkness of sin. so it could mean cast out of heaven and living in darkness and guilt until the judgement.

[A Cup of No]

Perhaps pertinent to this discussion is the passage in Mark where Jesus casts the demons out of the man, and they beg to be cast into the swine. Perhaps it is when demons are no longer inhabiting a body that they are cast into holding until the judgment? I think this would make sense of the intense desire to be occupying *something.* It appears that a punishment for being cast out of heaven is the lack of a body, a burden which angels obedient to God do not appear to share. But this is just speculation.

Mark 5:7-13

7And crying out with a loud voice, he said, "What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I adjure you by God, do not torment me." 8For he was saying to him, "Come out of the man, you unclean spirit!" 9And Jesus asked him, "What is your name?" He replied, "My name is Legion, for we are many." 10And he begged him earnestly not to send them out of the country. 11Now a great herd of pigs was feeding there on the hillside, 12and they begged him, saying, "Send us to the pigs; let us enter them." 13So he gave them permission. And the unclean spirits came out, and entered the pigs, and the herd, numbering about two thousand, rushed down the steep bank into the sea and were drowned in the sea.

[Sparko]

I dont think angels have bodies. they are spirit beings. they can take temporary bodies to do work on earth, but their normal state is spirit.

[ApologiaPhoenix]

I don't buy the Genesis 6 thing. It ends up creating a hybrid race. Genesis 6 is probably more about the aristocracy at the time.

Sparko's suggestion seems most plausible. Some have already been judged but not all, maybe as an example to the others of things to come?

[A Cup of No]

I dont think angels have bodies. they are spirit beings. they can take temporary bodies to do work on earth, but their normal state is spirit.

My girlfriend's an angel and she has a body.

[ApologiaPhoenix]

Has anybody considered that the demons could refer to TWeb trolls that are sentenced to the Matrix?

[Cynic Sage]

Has anybody considered that the demons could refer to TWeb trolls that are sentenced to the Matrix?

[DesertBerean]

I've always assumed that the demons were angels too. There's a book somewhere in my storage boxes that says when they were expelled out of heaven along with Satan they were confined to the Earth and its atmosphere (hence the references to spiritual high places in the Bible); the earth is therefore considered their "chains" since they cannot leave the world.

Well--I'm working on setting up a library in my office; if I find it, I'll try to remember to post it here...

[gharfish]

I think Sparko is right; the word wrongly translated as hell, is neither gehenna (nor sheol), but "Tartarus." It hasn't any connection to the final revelation of the Hell; which Jesus called the lake of fire/ (which is ("the second death." Tarturus appears in the Bible only one time; here in 2nd Peter 2: 4.

Peter gets it from classic Greek literature, where this place is, for ex., as in the Odyssey, there, the "Titans" were chained everlastingly in punishment.

Homer and Plato call the place Hades (literally "unseen") which the Greek OLD TESTAMENT uses to translate the Hebrew word Sheol. Sheol is everything from simply meaning the grave--"gravedom," the "pit"--the "realm of death" --up to the place (actual setting) of Jesus' parable of the rich man and Lazarus, in which these two 'characters,' if you will, are in an intermediate state, yet to be resurrected to final punishment or reward. The fallen angels here in Tartarus , are likewise, IMO, being held--detained--before their FINAL judgement. They have already been condemned, and must wait. They haven't the freedom that (many) other fallen angels=demons do: to 'move about at will.'

I do not think there is any connection whatsoever to Genesis 6, because--well--the "sons of God" there were not angels, fallen ---or just kinda on their way to gettin' there...to desire to have sexual relations with human women, and then did (after a proper marriage), and produced offspring...


*sermonette officially over*

[A Cup of No]

I think Sparko is right; the word wrongly translated as hell, is neither gehenna (nor sheol), but "Tartarus." It hasn't any connection to the final revelation of the Hell; which Jesus called the lake of fire/ (which is ("the second death." Tarturus appears in the Bible only one time; here in 2nd Peter 2: 4.

Peter gets it from classic Greek literature, where this place is, for ex., as in the Odyssey, there, the "Titans" were chained everlastingly in punishment.

Do you know if the word occurs in any other literature besides Homer? I just can't wrap my mind around the fact that Peter, a fisherman, would've been reading Homer. But I could certainly be wrong. Perhaps also through popular usage the word had become a literary allusion that had lost its ties to its original piece of literature.

Homer and Plato call the place Hades (literally "unseen") which the Greek OLD TESTAMENT uses to translate the Hebrew word Sheol. Sheol is everything from simply meaning the grave--"gravedom," the "pit"--the "realm of death" --up to the place (actual setting) of Jesus' parable of the rich man and Lazarus, in which these two 'characters,' if you will, are in an intermediate state, yet to be resurrected to final punishment or reward. The fallen angels here in Tartarus , are likewise, IMO, being held--detained--before their FINAL judgement. They have already been condemned, and must wait. They haven't the freedom that (many) other fallen angels=demons do: to 'move about at will.'

But I think the question is why are these fallen angels in chains, and others are not?