The Devil is no VIP

Today I was looking at the Bible, and I decided to try to get the answer to an old question. When Jude and Peter complained of preachers who spoke evil of “dignitaries,” what, exactly, were they talking about?

Jude contrasts them with Michael, who, when arguing with Satan over the body of Moses, refused to make a “reviling accusation.” Instead, Michael called on God to rebuke Satan. Based on this passage, some people believe Jude and Peter were criticizing people who said mean things about fallen angels. The idea is that such beings are still “dignitaries” in heaven.

I dunno ’bout that.

Most people believe Beelzebub or Beelzebul is Satan. In any case, just about everyone believes he’s a fallen angel. The names the Bible give him don’t mean “dignitary.” Quite the opposite. Depending on who you ask, they mean “Lord of Flies,” “Lord of Garbage,” or “Lord of Feces.” Even if it means “Lord of Flies,” the word “Flies” connotes feces, because that’s what flies feed on. “Beel” is just “baal,” or “lord.”

How can God warn people against insulting Satan while permitting them to call him “Lord of Feces”?

In 2 Kings (as Trump and I call it), Jehu defeated Ahab and Jezebel, who worshiped Baal. Then he proclaimed a solemn assembly to honor Baal, and he called for all Baal worshipers to meet in Baal’s temple. Once they were inside, he told his troops not to let any escape, and that anyone who let a man escape would have to be killed in his place. The idolaters were killed, the temple was burned, and Jehu turned it into a public toilet. After that, untold thousands of Jews went there and relieved themselves all over it, with God’s approval.

In Ezra 6, Cyrus decreed that the temple would be rebuilt. The penalty for resisting his edict was to be hanged on a timber from your own house, and to have the house turned into a public toilet. To harm God’s house was to harm your own house.

In Jerusalem, many Jews worshiped Moloch, whose name is thought by some to mean “King of the World.” The consonant trio MLK is found in the Hebrew word for king. Melchizedek was the king of Jerusalem. The man whose ear Peter cut off was named Malchus.

Moloch was the Planned Parenthood of the Mediterranean area. If you wanted to succeed in life (sound familiar?), you would take your baby to a priest of Moloch, and the priest would put it in the hands of a bronze statue representing the false god. Under the hands there was a flaming brazier. The baby would fall into it. According to Jewish history, the pagans played drums to drown out the screams so the ambitious parents wouldn’t pity their babies. They roasted live babies just as the priests roasted clean sacrificial animals.

Moloch worship took place in Gehinnom (Gehenna), a valley next to the city of Jerusalem. When God’s servants overcame the pagans, Gehinnom became a place where Jews dumped their excrement and garbage. You can’t keep excrement in a city with no sewers. It’s where Judas fell when he hanged himself.

There is a pattern here.

The Bible makes it plain that we’re not supposed to gloat over defeated enemies, and I believe it also shows that we’re not supposed to ridicule them. But it seems permissible to call them what they are, and Beelzebub’s unflattering title is apt.

Some people who claim to have visited hell say it stinks. They say the stench is unimaginable. Rotten flesh, garbage, feces…you name it…multiplied by a thousand. They also say Satan and the demons and fallen angels have authority in hell, even if they can’t keep Jesus out or keep the saved in. Hell is like Satan’s headquarters. That makes sense, if you think of the connection to excrement and garbage. If God made Satan’s earthly house a place of filth, surely he wouldn’t hesitate to do the same thing to his palace under the ground.

I think it’s fine to call Satan the Lord of Dung and to say he’s unclean. Those are facts, not slurs. If that’s true, then who are the dignitaries the apostles refer to?

I agree with people who say “dignitaries” means God’s anointed human servants. Preachers who serve the enemy have a millennia-long history of reviling and slandering God’s people. The preachers Jude and Peter referred to do the same things. They’re with us now. If you don’t believe me, go to a prosperity gospel church, as I did, and see what they say about you when you talk about their errors. The people at Trinity Church had secret meetings about me after I left, and the pastor of New Dawn started yelling at a friend of mine in the parking lot, interrogating him about me.

Michael and Satan are similar beings. They’re on similar levels in the hierarchy of creation. Michael was not entitled to hurl slurs at Satan. Similarly, one human being shouldn’t hurl slurs at another human being. That, I believe, is the point of the comparison. We probably shouldn’t hurl slurs at anyone. The Bible says the kingdom of God won’t come to revilers.

People who are controlled by evil spirits often surround themselves with filth and darkness. I have a couple of relatives who love the dark. One allowed her house to fall apart as she sank into depravity. The walls became coated with mold. The floor was coated with a film of urine and feces from rats and a dog. Bugs were everywhere. The house stank. You could smell it from the yard. It was dark inside. The shades were always down, and she kept most of the lights turned off, even when her electric bills were paid through a charity program. It was like this for years, even after the dog died. Think about it: it’s a picture of hell. I don’t think that’s a coincidence.

She hated having the doors opened or the shades drawn. That’s not normal. The natural reaction from a person in a house like that would be to welcome fresh air and light.

I don’t know if the spirits turned the house into a facsimile of hell to make themselves feel at home and to torment the owner, or whether God allowed it to happen so they would have to work in a nasty sty befitting their supernatural status. Anyway, the resemblance to accounts of hell is obvious.

Here’s something interesting: when people sacrifice or give prayer to God, it fills heaven with pleasant smells. Look it up. If that’s true, given the symmetry of the supernatural, shouldn’t the curses on the spirits in hell make it stink?

I don’t think the spirits that oppose God are entitled to much honor. It wouldn’t make sense, considering how filthy they are. They love evil and hate good, and filth is evil.

I suspect that the lion’s den in the story of Daniel was a picture of hell. Think about it. There were no water hoses in Babylon. Standards of animal care in the ancient world would have been low. They wouldn’t have kept the den very clean, and it was full of huge cats that relieved themselves at will. The den would have been a dark pit full of dry bones (like hell), and the smell would have been beyond description. Daniel was able to visit, but he couldn’t be tormented or held there, just as Jesus visited hell and could not be held. Interesting.

By turning away from God for most of my life, I made myself a sort of outhouse for the wicked. I gave up protection, success, peace, and honor. I allowed myself to be filled with dead men’s bones: the spirits of the children of the angels. I let supernatural bullies move in and torment me. They sent their human servants to overcome me. I loved darkness and filth and hated light and cleanliness. I seemed okay by earth standards, but then so did the hypocritical priests who hated Jesus. Whitewashed tombs look fine from outside.

If you’re like me, my situation should sound familiar. Abusive people (mostly “friends” and relatives) used me like a toilet. When they wanted this or that, they walked over and defecated their problems into me and walked away relieved. Then I was left with the mess, and it festered inside me. I was like a diaper they passed around. Do you have an addict, a molester, an abusive boss, a friend who puts you down all the time, or a wife-beater in your life? Has someone spent your inheritance? Does someone who claims to love you make you pay his gambling debts? You should be familiar with the sensation I’m describing. The reason you’re in this position is your failure to align yourself with God.

Now I’m going through the slow process of having God wash out the filth I packed into myself over the course of decades, and the feculent abusers in my life are being driven out and beaten, as they should be. I hit plateaus. I slide backward from time to time. It’s not instantaneous, and it can be fatiguing. That’s all my fault. God never slipped up. I did. I won’t complain. In spite of the setbacks, it’s wonderful.

The Bible says the kingdom of God is inside us. The supernatural realm is symmetrical. If the kingdom of God isn’t inside you, then hell must be. The Bible says you can’t be neutral.

It’s a very good sign when a prosperity preacher condemns you and calls you a traitor. It’s an undeserved honor. No one should be discouraged when it happens. These people push others into hell, and they keep them out of the presence of God. Peter and Jude warned us about Joyce Meyer and Benny Hinn and the rest. It shouldn’t upset us when we see their prophetic words proven true. We should see it as encouragement.

I don’t have anything nice to say about Satan. He rules the universe’s septic tank, and one day it’s going to be pumped out. It can’t happen fast enough for me.