The very first thing God gave to mankind in Genesis 1:26, back in the first generation when he created man in his image, was dominion. He gave them dominion and told them to subdue the earth with it, saying, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion,” over the fish, the birds, the livestock, and the creeping things.
I’m gonna start directly hitting the principality that wants humanity to long for “escape from their troubles”. I don’t know his name; one of you out there might; but no matter, to me he’s Escape My Life. Sometimes it manifests as drugs or alcohol or running or any number of things we might consider escape mechanisms, but it includes “people who wanna go to heaven” and “people who wanna go back to the Garden of Eden”, so… I dunno; buckle up.
In my first post I talked about how we have been given “authority”, an element of dominion, and said that we’d address the question, “Why have it?” To begin to answer, we start by using the Scriptures to walk through history, which happens totally out of order in The Bible. (i know that’s supposed to be underlined but it looks so inordinately emphasized that i’m taking license.)
All things exist inside of God, who has no edges and is not contained by anything because he is not a subset of anything larger. He is Deut 6:4, “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one” because he’s not a fraction of anything else. At the beginning of the book, within him, we find:
Genesis 1:2, the earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep.
Something isn’t right here; it’s dark. A dark watery void which doesn’t sound anything like God – who is light – and here he comes to change that with the words, “Let there be light.”
If that scene was all gucci the way things are “supposed to be” in God’s opinion, he would’ve had no desire to start changing it, right? He would have already been in a state of rest. Gen 1:4 says he separates the light from the darkness and calls the light that he creates, “good”. He makes that distinction between light and the darkness; so we can establish that the first scene in verse 2 is not what he wanted it to be.
I’d like us to please note that all of this “stuff” here, the Holy Spirit calls “earth”. The stuff that’s gonna make space and the water beyond space, and seas and land and moon and stars… it’s all “earth”; this is important.
So why is it dark here, and not what God desires? Because of what happened before the book started. Ya gotta go to the last book to get that story.
Revelation 12:3: And another sign appeared in heaven: behold, a great red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns, and on his heads seven diadems. His tail swept down a third of the stars of heaven and cast them to earth.
Sometime we’ll get into the symbolism of this, but for now please understand that the one-third of the stars are the angels that followed Lucifer in his rebellion, and who became the demons. Stars are angels and vice-versa all over the Scriptures.
So the demons were all thrown down to earth during that part of the war. Revelation 12:9 equates the great dragon with “that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world – he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him.” That’s why we find the serpent in Eden.
Now to Luke 10:17 which we’ve looked at before, for different reasons:
The seventy-two returned with joy, saying, “Lord, even the demons are subject to us in your name!” And he said to them, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven.”
Okay, so where in the story, from Genesis 1 to Jesus’ teaching this, did we see that event go down?
Right. Because it happened before the book starts. The serpent is already on earth when the garden of Eden is created, so “I saw Satan fall to the earth like lightning” is pre-Genesis; pre-people.
And what an interesting response to their testimony. They’re talking about having dominion over demons and he’s thinking about what happened before Genesis 1. Stick that thought in your back pocket.
So back to Gen 1:2, here we have darkness, ambiguity, and water (earth), and the demons are under the water; and God wants to change this situation, so he does.
He makes light, and then puts some of the water in a ball and puts space and stars in between that and the rest of the water that’s out there after space ends. Genesis 1:6 calls that, “an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters. And God made the expanse and separated the waters that were under the expanse from the waters that were above the expanse.” After space, more water. Interesting but not terribly important right now – other than we need to see what’s going on vis-à-vis the fact that the demons were cast “to earth” before all this started. They were under the water, content in their darkness and void, and now stuff is changing all around them.
Next, God makes the land appear. Before plants and animals and people, demons are also on the land.
If that seems like a stretch, I have a feeling that most of you understand that principalities have control over certain geographical regions. This is seen in Scriptures like Daniel 10:13 where an angel tells how “The prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me twenty-one days,” and then in 10:20 continues to describe how “the prince of Greece will come.”
Some of you have real-world experience with spirits presiding over certain geographies, and have gained insight into the activity of demons and principalities in those places. The Holy Spirit reveals this so that we know how to pray and declare more effectively.
Some of you know that you have more authority in certain geographies than others, and this has to do with the nature of your specific purpose in the kingdom of heaven. If there were no principalities governing certain geographies, would there be such a thing as “having more authority in one geography than another”? No, all the world would feel and react the same to you without spirits inhabiting property.
Once I sat and thought, “Now why do people worship, like, a tree? What spirit is in the tree that draws them to itself?” Then I realized that different spirits chalked out territory for themselves according to a power hierarchy. There would be one over a tree, over a field, over a city, a state, a country, a continent. A river, a lake, an ocean.
Now picture this: We’ve established that the principalities and demons are in the earth (the water) before the people. Imagine land appearing: the scene looks like the American settlers staking out land as they cross the continent – but it happens in an instant. They battle amongst themselves for who’s gonna take “from this river to that mountain”. Someone wants California real bad; someone wants Mount Everest real bad… (mind you, this wrestling match is all taking place on the single continent that science refers to as “Pangea”. continents don’t get divided by the Atlantic, Indian and Arctic Oceans until Genesis 10:25.)
The principalities have decided these borders long before men were around. Today, we draw a line between New York and Massachusetts and we think we’re making that decision; in truth men’s souls are just resonating with something that already exists in the spirit. You can literally see the vegetation change color and character as you drive from state to state in the U.S. – I’m sure I’m not the only one who has noticed this. The plants and soil react to the principality that “owns” them. The people do, too.
Look at Romans 8:20, “For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it.” Not willingly. And we’re not talking about Adam, there; Adam was told to subdue the creation because it had been subjected to someone else – someone who subjects things “to futility”. Who does that sound like? Remember our first article: Satan actually owns all the kingdoms of the world or it wouldn’t have been any temptation at all.
All that to say: we have Scripture, physical and spiritual evidence pointing to the demons being on the land when it first appeared.
Next God makes the first plants, then the sun & moon, then fish and birds, then land creatures. Right up through Day Five, here are the demons, owning all this stuff that we still see them own today. (dude, people are out there worshiping trees right this very minute; don’t think for a second there’s not a spirit in that tree beckoning them to do so.) And you can picture the demons being happy as clams with their new real estate. It even looks familiar to them because the planet earth we see here is a reflection of things that exist in heaven.
Until.
Day Six, our Father says, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion,” and he says to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion,” as we’ve already quoted. And the demons are like, “Uhhhh... A second ago, we had dominion over all this stuff. Who are these chumps?”
Now, tell me: I hear a LOT of the church saying and praying and singing, “Take me back to the garden of Eden.” (Escape My Life.) Calling it “paradise” – which the Scripture does not. It seems people believe the Garden of Eden was this easy, no problems, no effort place with nothing to do but sit in warm grassy fields and eat fruit and do nothing all day. (which sounds astoundingly boring to me, and I have only a fraction of their hundreds-of-years of life under my belt) Maybe they make a drum out of a log and learn to play some sick beats.
And here’s my question: Why would God need to give us dominion and direct us to “subdue” something if it were a stress-free Candy Land? We would have no use for dominion. “Here I am, subduing this pineapple tree that’s dropping delicious sweet fruit in my lap with no effort!” How ‘bout, no.
We had a job back then. We were using our dominion to subdue things. Stuff was getting out of order – I bet we can guess by whom that was happening – and our job was to keep them in check. And we were exceedingly good at it because we were created by God to have dominion over them! So let’s stop dreaming of getting back to the Garden of Eden as if it’s this wonderful escape from our troubles. There was serious work to do and it wasn’t bliss.
Remember Jesus’ odd reaction to the disciples’ elation at having dominion over the demons in Luke 10? He’s saying, “I remember when they were first thrown to earth, back when everyone was doing what you’re doing.” So I ask us: Why are we romanticizing Eden, when the reality is that Jesus has restored to us the dominion we lost? We’re already there. They were doing the same work that we’re supposed to be doing now, so… Let’s rejoice in this time we live in and not be mesmerized by that Escape My Life principality.
Recap with me: The Scripture says Satan and his angels were cast to earth, more than a couple times. Jesus says he saw it go down. And Scripture places Satan in the garden, as proof that this had happened before we happened. And it’s Scripture that says literally the only thing that God gave us was dominion. First thought on his mind, first words out of his mouth to us. I’m not just sitting here makin’ this shit up. I’m reading what it says and believing it and taking a moment for some critical thinking about it.
You wanna see me flirt with my imagination a little; here, I’ll put my Holy Ghost Thinking Cap on and pitch this to you:
Sometimes I wonder how many people he made in his likeness in round one. Note the plural, “And let them have dominion,” – there are more than one. Round one “God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” I propose to you that it means “male and female at the same time” – like frogs. Cuz when you get to Adam, he pulls the woman out of the man. Female is in there with him, because God has both male and female together within his Oneness, and he says he’s making men in his own likeness. Logical hop, skip, and a jump to say, “Okay, in chapter 2 we have Adam made in God’s likeness and woman is found within him, and later separated out, so ‘male and female he created them’ is likely ‘at the same time’.”
The point? We have a bunch of people with some useful dominion over something, to subdue something. The scene is set. Angels, you have been cast to the earth; you thought you owned it; then God made an army of tormentors to manage (subdue) you.
Until.
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