of the immortality of either spirit creatures or of human souls.—Gen. 3:15.

40. Which, if any, of the demons are immortal, and why?

⁴⁰ The wicked spirit Satan the Devil lived on after Adam and Eve died. He has lived till now by God’s permission, looking to the settlement of the big question in dispute, Who rules the universe? Jehovah God will show that He runs the universe and dictates its laws and determines and decrees what is good and bad. To the Christian followers of the Seed of his woman God has said: “The God who gives peace will crush Satan under your feet shortly.” (Rom. 16:20, NW) Jesus Christ his glorified Son is the one whom God will use to crush Satan the original Serpent and his seed, for this faithful Son is the one whom the Serpent bruised at the heel when he became blood and flesh like the children of Abraham. In proof of this it is written: “Therefore, since the ‘young children’ are sharers of blood and flesh, he also similarly partook of the same things, that through his death he might destroy the one having the means to cause death, that is, the Devil, and might emancipate all those who for fear of death were subject to slavery all through their lives. For he is really not assisting angels at all, but he is assisting Abraham’s seed.” (Heb. 2:14-16, NW) God healed the bruised heel of his woman’s Seed by resurrecting him from the dead, restoring him to the spirit realm, but rewarding him with the prize of incorruptibility and immortality. (1 Tim. 6:15, 16) But Satan the wicked spirit still remains mortal.

41. (a) What additional Bible testimony first identifies the chief demon by name? (b) How does the Bible warn humans who indulge in spiritistic practices?

⁴¹ In the Scriptures Satan the Devil is not named before the flood of Noah’s day. He is first named in the life account of Job, which appears to have been written by the prophet Moses centuries after the flood. Spirit mediums together with inquiring of the dead are mentioned as first existing after the flood, God’s law through Moses warning against these agents of wicked spirits: “There should not be found in you . . . anyone who consults a spirit medium or a professional foreteller of events or anyone who inquires of the dead.” (Deut. 18:10, 11, NW; also Lev. 19:31; 20:6, 27) After the flood these forms of demonism began with the city of Babylon founded by Nimrod, the great-grandson of Noah. (Gen. 10:8-10) To Babylon the prophet Isaiah said: “These two things shall come upon thee in a moment, in one day, loss of children and widowhood; they shall come upon thee in full measure for [or, in spite of] the multitude of thy sorceries, for the great abundance of thine enchantments. Stand now with thine enchantments and with the multitude of thy sorceries, wherein thou hast laboured [from when?] from thy youth; if so be thou shalt be able to turn them to profit, if so be thou mayest cause terror. Thou art wearied in the multitude of thy counsels. Let now the interpreters of the heavens, the observers of the stars, who predict according to the new moons what shall come upon thee, stand up, and save thee.” (Isa. 47:9, 12, 13, Da, margin) The last book of the Bible foretells why modern Babylon must yet fall like ancient Babylon, saying: “Because your merchants were the top-ranking men of the earth, for by your spiritistic practice all the nations were misled.”—Rev. 18:23, NW.

42-44. When and how was the first or chief demon first joined by other disobedient spirit persons?

⁴² When did the other demons under Satan the “ruler of the demons” come to exist? There is no Bible record that any of the holy angels rebelled with Satan at the garden of Eden or shortly afterward. But the Bible record does show when other spirit creatures did become disobedient to God and thus become demons, imitators of Satan or the “seed” of the Serpent. When was that? At least in the last hundred and twenty years before the flood of Noah’s day. The inspired record by Moses says: “Now it came about that when men started to grow in numbers on the surface of the ground and daughters were born to them, then the sons of God began to notice the daughters of men, that they were good-looking, and they went to taking wives for themselves of all whom they selected. After that Jehovah said: ‘My spirit shall not act toward man indefinitely in that he is also flesh. Accordingly his days shall amount to a hundred and twenty years.’ The Nephʹi·lim proved to be in the earth in those days, and also after that, when the sons of God continued to have relations with the daughters of men and they bore sons to them, they were the mighty ones who were of that world, the men of fame. Consequently Jehovah saw that the badness of man had become great in the earth and every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only bad all the time.”—Gen. 6:1-5, NW.

⁴³ Those “sons of God” who married the “daughters of men” were spirit sons of God such as had sung together and shouted for joy when God laid the foundations for creating the earth. (Job 38:4-7) “For who in the skies can be compared unto Jehovah? Who among the sons of God is like unto Jehovah?” (Ps. 89:6, AS, footnote 2)b So Moffatt translates Genesis 6:2, 4 as follows: “The angels noticed that the daughters of men were beautiful, and they married any one of them that they chose. (It was in these days that the Nephilim giants arose on earth, as well as afterwards whenever angels had intercourse with the daughters of men and had children born to them; these were the heroes who were famous in the days of old.)” Here in Genesis 6:4 the Alexandrine Manuscript of the Greek Septuagint Version also reads “angels of God” instead of “sons of God.”

⁴⁴ This explanation of who these “sons of God” were has nothing to do with the Slavonic version of the spurious Book of Enoch.

45, 46. How did those disobedient spirit persons act among earth’s inhabitants, and what resulted?

⁴⁵ To marry the daughters of men and have sex relations with them those “sons of God” had to materialize as humans, as men. To live with their wives and enjoy their company night and day and raise their offspring those “sons of God” or angels had to remain materialized in the flesh for as long as they took part in such married life. The evidence is that they continued in this materialized state without interruption until the Flood. During all this time they were neglecting their God-given duties in the spirit realm, in order to enjoy the satisfaction of the passions of the flesh. This was disobedience to God, not only in this respect, but also in the mixing of what is spiritual or angelic with what is human for breeding purposes. The Creator Jehovah God purposed that the human race should be purely human, not a hybrid race by an unequal yoking of angels and women. That was the reason why he made Adam’s wife Eve out of a rib from Adam’s side. As regards all earthly creatures, God fixed it for each family kind to remain inside its own family boundaries. (Deut. 22:9-11; Gen. 1:11, 12, 21, 24, 25) Those disobedient sons of God were thus causing unnatural confusion and working contrary to God’s law respecting mankind. Jesus Christ gives us to understand that, in the spirit realm, “neither do they marry nor are they given in marriage” nor do they thus produce angelic children.—Matt. 22:30, NW.

⁴⁶ The natural result was that the offspring of such unnatural marriages were freakish hybrids called “Nephʹi·lim.” The Israelites compared them to the giants of Canaan, in fact, calling the giants of Canaan “Nephʹi·lim.” (Num. 13:33, NW) Being sons of disobedience, they were wicked. Being hybrids without power to reproduce, they made a name for themselves, not by raising families, but by violent deeds, setting an example for men in general to fill the earth with violence and to have the inclination of the thoughts of their hearts only bad all the time. They were called “mighty ones” or Gibborim and were worldly, “of that world.”—Gen. 6:4, NW.

(To be concluded in our next issue)

Questions From Readers

● Why does Matthew 27:9 attribute the words about the thirty silver pieces for Jesus’ betrayal to the prophet Jeremiah, when, actually, Zechariah recorded the words, at Zec chapter 11 verse 12 of his prophecy?—N. F., United States.

The name Jeremiah is omitted in some later manuscripts. Some say it was a copyist’s error. Others say it was just a slip on Matthew’s part, saying Jeremiah when he meant Zechariah. None of these explanations seem adequate. We may view as correct the New World Translation’s rendering of Matthew 27:9, 10: “Then what was spoken through Jeremiah the prophet was fulfilled, saying: ‘And they took the thirty silver pieces, the price upon the man that was priced, the one on whom some of the sons of Israel set a price, and they gave them for the potter’s field, according to what Jehovah had commanded me.’”

A more probable explanation is this. The order of the prophetic books, as received by the Jews in Matthew’s time, was Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Isaiah and the twelve minor prophets. It is so found in the Babylonian Talmud, also at present in the manuscripts of the French and German Jews. The Jewish Encyclopedia, under “Bible Canon,” shows that at one time Jeremiah preceded Ezekiel and Isaiah in the listing of the prophets and that it was later that Isaiah went ahead of Jeremiah. So in Matthew’s time Jeremiah stood first in the listing of the prophets, and since it was the practice of those times to call an entire division of the Bible by the name of the first book in that division, Matthew could say Jeremiah and mean the division that it headed, and which division included the book of Zechariah.

Jesus showed that this was the practice, to call an entire division by the first book in that division, when he said, at Luke 24:44 (NW): “All the things written in the law of Moses and in the Prophets and Psalms about me must be fulfilled.” When he said Psalms he did not mean just that one book, but all the writings or Hagiographa, of which collection or division Psalms was the first book. And when Jesus said the Prophets he meant that entire division, but sometimes they used the name of the first book in that division to mean the whole section, and then the section would be called just Jeremiah. So in this sense Matthew could refer to Jeremiah and yet mean Zechariah’s words, since Zechariah’s prophecy was in the division that opened with the book of Jeremiah.

Announcements

HOLDING FAST TO PUBLICLY DECLARING OUR HOPE

Why keep still when you have a wonderful hope and know that others may share the joy it brings by learning of it and accepting it? There is no reason why, you reply, and properly so. On that account, as well as because it is a responsibility laid upon them, Jehovah’s witnesses persist in telling others about their hope that a new world of righteousness is at hand. To have the things to tell correctly in mind they are commanded to attend congregation