CS Lewis famously said, ‘There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them.’
On the one hand, there are those who dismiss the Greek and Canaanite pantheons as imaginary—despite the words of Paul about principalities and powers and despite the actions of Jesus in His relentless attacks on their claims. If you don’t know classical mythology, you won’t recognise when Jesus wars against it.
On the other hand, there are those who endlessly multiply demons, naming them for their functions—lust, anger, jealousy, pride, religion—or alternatively after a human being in the Bible: Jezebel, Athaliah, Ahab, Benhadad and so on.
Now I’m not particularly keen on either approach, whether it’s naming by function or for people. It’s easy to miss, if labeling spirits by their functions, that just one major player can be responsible for a whole raft of issues. The tactics of Python, for example, can include constriction, intimidation, seduction, jealousy, illness, divination, silence, ambiguity, flattery. It might seem a wide variety of demonic forces is ranged against us, when it’s just one threshold guardian.
As for naming for people—Jezebel, Athaliah, Ahab or Benhadad—we fall into the trap of forgetting these were men and women beloved by God who, if they’d been redeemed and had come out of complicity with the various spirits oppressing them, would have been like Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of Jesus, Joseph of Egypt and the centurion Cornelius.
We need to remember who the Enemy is, and it’s not people. It’s all too easy to dishonour people when we categorise them as a ‘Jezebel’ or an ‘Ahab’ instead of becoming conscious that their behaviour is influenced by one of the fallen threshold guardians. And when we do dishonour them, we actually fall into the trap of becoming complicit with Leviathan.
The spirits of the threshold use us as their hands and feet, mouthpieces and watchers in the world. They can’t be everywhere. But they can use the alliances they’ve forged with our families. A covenant doesn’t just end because the people who agreed to one passed away. It remains in force from one generation to the next as long as the family exists.
If anyone in our family line, and there’s no distinction here between bloodline and adoption, has ever raised a covenant with a spirit, it remains intact until it’s revoked. Our complicity with the threshold spirits doesn’t need to be active allegiance, it can be passive loyalty—that is, it’s our default situation because we haven’t asked God to cancel the covenant our ancestors have undertaken.
But, many believers ask, isn’t it all ‘done at the Cross’? And what people mean by this question is: when I asked Jesus into my heart, weren’t all these covenants nullified? And the answer is: they would have been, had you asked Him to do that. So, did you ask? And did you repent? That is, did you ask Jesus to empower your words when you told God you wanted to change and turn to Him?
Asking Jesus into your heart is not the same as going, by faith, to the Cross and asking for the annulment of an ungodly covenant.
Now every so often my theory that there are seven threshold guardians—seven, to mimic the sevenfold Spirit before the throne of God—undergoes a serious bout of testing. I’m looking at the work of Jesus healing history and, suddenly, I realise He’s confronting a spirit I’ve never heard of previously. But, so far at any rate, all of these ‘new’ spirits have turned out to be another guise for one of the old enemies, another head belonging to one of the same monstrous bodies, another face of one of the ancient foes. This would disconcert me at first but then I realised that the threshold spirits were also throne guardians. They are the cherubim and seraphim who protected the holiness of the heavenly court. So, of course they can have multiple heads or more than one face. That’s how such entities are described.
Now this long explanation is by way of introducing a surprising entity, a Canaanite goddess of violence, dispossession and a sudden, swift sacrifice to seize the moment of opportunity. She makes Wonder Woman look wimpish. When her brother, the storm-god Baal-Hadad invents a weapon called lightning, she’s baffled. What does he need that for? After all, she’s defeated all his enemies for him. She’s slain the Sea, annihilated the River, muzzled and thrashed Tannin, the sea monster, killed Lotan, the seven-headed coiling serpent, snuffed out heaven’s darlings, Fire and Flame, dispossessed the Flood, and ground Death down into a smashed pile and buried the bits.
Her name is Anat and it’s related to the appointed time—to the opportunistic moment to strike and bring others down. Now her claims are so much of an affront to the sovereignty of God and the pre-eminence of Jesus that you’d expect Him to have met her challenge. And of course, He does—not in a general sense, but in a very specific way. Throughout John’s gospel, there’s a repeated statement by Jesus or about Him: ‘the time has not yet come.’ When He’s at Cana, before He performs His first miracle, He says just this, but then He goes ahead anyway. He does not allow the appointed time to rule Him; He commands it as His servant.
There’s a lot going on in the background to this miracle that alludes to Anat, the dispossessor of mankind. It’s no coincidence that Jesus makes new wine, a word that in Hebrew is related to both dispossession and the return of inheritance.
Anat is allied with Rachab the spirit of wasting, and Kronos, the spirit of abuse and time.
Jesus has already defeated her. However, it’s important to remember a defeated spirit is not a dead spirit. Not yet, anyway.
How do we become complicit with such a ferocious, violent goddess? When we completely lose faith that Jesus can overcome Leviathan for us, or any other guardian, we sense the claims of Anat that she’s conquered all the monsters of earth and heaven and we seek an alliance. We then become victims of the appointed time.
Once again, it’s all about unbelief in the atonement. We can’t convince ourselves that Jesus is the all-sufficient sacrifice for the threshold we’re about to face. And we aren’t willing to surrender ourselves into His hands, so He can carry us across. But that’s what He wants to do.
This is Grace Drops and I’m Anne Hamilton. May your appointed times be in the Lord’s hands.
A future book, Anne?
Not in the immediate future, at least not as a feature. Basically, I think “Anat”, as a spirit, though not of course as a mythological goddess, is the same as “Lilith”. I actually found “Anat” while I was investigating the story of the wedding feast at Cana with all its echoes of “appointed time”: Jesus saying, “My hour is not yet come” and so on.
Anne: this is exciting – broadening my picture of Lilith
I was surprised to find the Lilith connection, Peter. The story of Anat bears no resemblance to the Lilith story. But the words associated with them are the same. And both are “taken down” by gentleness. When particular spirits are overcome by the same Fruit of the Spirit, I conclude they are the same entity.
Thanks Anne. Always enjoy your “Grace Drops.” Currently reading Kronos book. Question: Baal-Hadad invents lightning? Isn’t that a weapon of Yahweh Tzviout(sp)?
Hi Mark – thanks for the question. I think the spelling is Tsehvaot (though that’s probably not standard.) It can also be understood similar to Sabaoth, Lord of Armies or Lord of Hosts.
All the principalities claimed to have created/invented something that is part of Yahweh’s created domain. So, to clarify my statement about Baal Hadad (or any of the others): it’s always an alleged work of creation or invention. I think we tend to overlook the war of Jesus against these deities because we notice what He is doing that is in alignment with the Father, not His triumph over an adversary. So, with walking on water, we look back to the Spirit of God fluttering on the face of the waters, or the Ark “walking” on water (which is what the Hebrew says) but ignore Asherah who claimed the title “She who walks on water”. So, Jesus takes on Baal Hadad several times – the lightning aspect being at the wedding feast at Cana. The amount of electricity required to turn six pots of water of the size specified into wine is equivalent, at least according to my calculations, to an average of 440 lightning bolts per pot.
I enjoyed listening to this. When Jesus said in John 16:4, “when the ‘time’ shall come…” do you suppose He is referring to Anat?
I think it is very likely that is the case. This is the Last Supper and, within a few hours, Jesus would reference the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven (the statement that Caiaphas said negated any need for witnesses) – this is both an allusion to Daniel 7:13 and to Baal Hadad the so-called “Cloud-Rider”. Since in the space of 24 hours, there will be references to Baal Hadad, to Anat’s sister Myrrh, to Mot, Death – the one Anat claimed to conquer – it seems very likely this points to her.
Dearest Anne
Your books have had a profound impact on me. I’ve only read 4 of them so far, and have read about the carry forward of agreements with threshold spirits, when a spiritual agreement is renounced, does that renunciation and cleansing through the Blood of our Messiah negate the agreement for the whole family henceforth?
It depends. Some descendants may reactivate those agreements; some may be complicit in their own right with various spirits and have to go through the act of renunciation personally. But it will change the family dynamic and provide a pathway for cleansing for those who want to avail themselves of it.
This Anat thing just hit home so hard (it describes the situation to the dot)… and at the moment it seems that gentleness will be difficult.
On the other point I’ve been meaning to ask: do you question the existense of “demons” (that can inhabit a human) as separate from fallen angels (authorities and powers). I have come to believe that demons are the lowest “on Earth agents” in the fallen army. Thank you so much!
PS. Sadly, Book Depository has closed down.
Hi Jenna – I’m not even sure what “gentleness” as a Fruit of the Spirit looks like. I’ve asked God what He means by it (not what we mean by it) but haven’t got a deep insight yet. It’s also translated “meekness” and Moses was said to be the meekest man ever – and that’s my point of confusion because Moses had a temper, led armies at times and got the Levites to attack and kill those who worshipped the golden calf. Not my image of “meek” or “gentle”.
On the distinction between demons and fallen angels: fallen angels are spirits who have left their appointed places; demons are also spirits, but they come from human-angelic hybrids and their bodies are dead. Unlike fully human spirits, their spirits are trapped on earth and they want to be re-embodied again. I think this is what you were already saying, but just making it clear.
Yes, sad about Book Depository. It was one of my favourite places. I’m going to have to change lots of links.
Yes, excellent point on gentleness!
Interesting, I never thought of demon spirits in terms of them being *trapped* here.
In Greek, they use meekness in the sense of responsiveness to direction or command. Like the classic general’s war horse that was the meekness thing he had ever known. Does that fit?
That’s getting much closer.
As soon as I read this, my thoughts went to 2 Timothy 2:24-26, a scripture stored in my memory as a foundation for dealing with the narcissist in my life. This post really connected some dots for me. Although a quick look at a study guide says that this word for gentleness is not used anywhere else in the NT, I would assume it is a different greek word used in the “fruit of the Spirit” text. I would greatly appreciate learning more about this “gentleness” and being able to grow in that “Midot”.
The word used in the Fruit of the Spirit is derived from “gentle strength” or “gentle force”. https://biblehub.com/greek/4240.htm Here it’s described as a divine balancing act.
I have the idea that meekness is not looking to build your own power base. When Moses was confronted by Korah et.al. and God was going to kill all the people who sided with Korah, Moses intervened for them. Also, when he was originally confronted, he bowed to the ground to show that he was not trying to lord his position over them. I think Moses mostly did what God told him to do, and that made him the meekest man in all the world.
I am also reminded of a story of CS Lewis when he was asked how he felt about the fame from his books, he said something along the lines, “I am careful not to look in that direction”.
So I think meekness is the quality of Jesus, who though he was God, did not see equality with God as something to cling to.
I don’t have an exact word for gentleness/meekness, other than “not power hungry”; or perhaps willing to relinquish power.
That’s really helpful, Jill. Thank you so much.