vladimirgrebenar 
Angels are the serving spirits of God, creatures who have no body but have far greater intelligence than humans and have perfect knowledge. We read in Scripture that God spoke to man through angels from the very beginning of the world: “But the Angel of the LORD called him form heaven, ‘Abraham, Abraham!’” (Gen 22:11), that is, how the angels convey God’s message: “Then the angel said to the women in reply, ‘Do not be afraid! I know that you are seeking Jesus the crucified. He is not here, for he is risen, as he said.’ (…) Then go quickly and tell his disciples, ‘He has been raised from the dead, and he is going before you to Galilee’” (Mt 28:7-4).
Their task from the beginning is to serve God and people, and God the Father has decided that every man has his guardian angel who helps him on the path of holiness. By rebelling in the spiritual expanses of Paradise of one-third of the angels, they divided into two camps, the first who remained faithful to God and the second who was expelled from Paradise. Unfortunately, little is said today about the activities of good angels and their positive impact on man, much less about the activities of evil spirits and their negative impact on human life. Such circumstances also apply to the field of work and initiating business initiatives that are interpreted purely rationally without explaining how much spirituality has an impact on true business and life success.
The good angels fight for us to do the will of God, and the evil angels fight for us to do our will in pride and thus fall into doing their will by committing mortal sins. Good angels treat people who are in mortal sin and low morals completely contrary to the action of evil angels. We also call evil angels demons, evil spirits, devils and opposing spirits. Good angels act in opposition to evil angels: “The good spirit, on the other hand, uses such in the opposite way: it stings and bites them with the inner voice of conscience (…) A good angel encourages and strengthens, comforts and moves to tears, inspires and calms and removing all obstacles in order to progress in good. ”[1]
Our daily lives are intertwined with the constant promptings of good angels and the temptations of demons. According to the movements in his heart and mind, a Christian can know if it is God’s will. Good angels act on our feelings and through those feelings communicate God’s will for our lives. Through lived experiences of faith, man acquires increasing knowledge and the ability to discern the various stimuli in his heart that come from angels.
Since the fall of angels and humans, the world has been a historical stage of constant spiritual warfare for human souls, between good angels serving God and evil angels serving Satan. Man, by his life, deeds, and speech, chooses the side for eternity. There is no third neutral side in this spiritual war. Atheism, Gnosticism, occultism, spiritism, satanism, freemasonry, various religions and human ideologies that do not have Jesus at the center of their teachings are untrue interpretations of spiritual reality.
Jesus established the doctrine of spiritual and natural reality and taught about the workings of good angels and evil spirits, and gave authority to all Christians to expel the spiritual enemy from their lives in his name. Jesus, the apostles, and the disciples cast out evil spirits from people who were suffering great spiritual problems. Many rationalist theologians in Jesus ’day known as the Pharisees accused Jesus of being possessed by an evil spirit himself because he cast out evil spirits.
Jesus answered them: “How can Satan drive out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand” (Mk 3:24). The importance of understanding the influence of demons and fighting them is taught by the Lord Himself. Jesus threatened those who in ignorance and arrogance accused him of being possessed because he cast out demons, that it was an eternal and unforgivable sin. Spiritual reality cannot be interpreted by rational methods or scientific attempts, because the spiritual laws and actions of angels are only partially understandable and insufficiently known to us.
“The beginning of the fall of the fallen angels is explained by their arrogance to rise above their own reality: independence at the level of God.”[2] One third of the angels rebelled in the expanses of Paradise, refusing to do the will of God, taking the position of “non serviam”[3]. Did they rebelliously plan to stay in Paradise and retain all privileges and create some spiritual world without God, counting on God to give in to them because of His perfect love, or did they plan to overthrow God’s order in Paradise, or were they motivated by some other ideas?
We do not know for sure the answer to these questions. But we know from the conversation in the wilderness between Satan and Jesus that Jesus responded to the leader of the fallen angels when he first tempted him to do his (Jesus’) will and then to do his (devil’s) will. Citing verses from the Old Testament and interpreting them in his own way, Satan complained to Jesus that he had been unjustly condemned and cast out of Paradise: “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down. For it is written: ‘He will command his angels concerning you,’ and ‘with their hands they support you, lest you dash your foot against a stone.’ Jesus answered to him, ‘Again it is written, ‘You shall not put the Lord, your God, to the test’’” (Mt 4: 6-7).
According to Jesus’ answer, it can be recognized that the evil angels were cast out of Paradise because they tempted God by imposing their will in perfect angelic consciousness, and not because they fell under the burden of doing God’s will. The arrogant and exalted angel of the highest hierarchy failed to persuade all or most of the angels to his side. The rebellious angels were defeated in the expanses of Paradise in a spiritual war by angels faithful to God led by Archangel Michael, who until then had been several levels lower in the hierarchy than the leader of the rebellious angels.
Places in Paradise where God’s perfect harmony reigns were no longer for the angels who chose to do their will against God’s will. Thus a third of the rebellious angels with their evil leader fell into the abyss of ruin: “How you have fallen from the heavens, o Morning Star, son of the down! How you have been cut down to the earth, you who conquered nations! In your heart you said: ‘I will scale the heavens; Above the stars of God I will step up my throne; I will take my seat on the Mount of Assembly, on the heights of Zaphon. I will ascend above the tops of the clouds; I will be like the Most High!’ No! Down to Sheol you will be brought to the depths of the pit!” (Isaiah 14: 12-15).
Having lost the grace of living with God, fallen angels have lost the ability to be creative. They have fallen into a state of perfect evil and full of pride, but they have retained their angelic power and intelligence which they use for destructive intentions. Because of his superior intelligence over man, the opposing angel was able to lead the first humans into an act for which God commanded that man should not commit it. Thus, instead of serving and helping man, the rebellious angel led man to disobey God in order to win him over to his rebellious side.
The Creator punished man and fallen angels for disobedience by expelling them from Paradise. He gave man the opportunity to return to the fleeting life of the earth, and he uttered a curse upon the fallen angels: “On your belly you shall crawl, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life. I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; They will strike at your head, while you strike at their heel” (Gen 3: 14-15).
God’s wisdom turned demons against men and men against demons: “For our struggle is not with flesh and blood, but with principalities, with the powers, with the world rulers of this present darkness, with the evil spirits in the heavens” (Eph 6:12). In the Epistle to the Christians in Ephesus, under the “Principalities, Powers and World rulers” the Apostle Paul refers to the hierarchy of evil spirits in their evil kingdom. The action of the fallen angels is completely destructive, and the best they could create after the fall is Hell, a place of eternal horror in the depths of the underworld.
They use the same narrative today against human life and work. Many business and civic initiatives that experience their fiasco are motivated by the action of evil angels and illuminated by its false light. The traces that the contrary spirit leaves behind among people are always divisions, because it makes it easier for him to carry out his intentions with the intention of destroying man, family, business, nations, humanity and the Church!
Demons attack people who progress toward God differently from people who are in mortal sins. People who progress in faith are attacked by an evil spirit in the following way: “In that case, it is proper for an evil spirit to bite, grieve and obstruct the soul, disturbing it with false reasons not to go further.”[4] The evil spirit approaches those who live in mortal sin differently: “Those who accumulate mortal sin upon mortal sin are accustomed by the enemy to regularly present false pleasures, seducing them to fantasize about sensory pleasures and other pleasures to keep them in their faults and sins. burden them even more “[5]
When it comes to people in mortal sin, the evil spirit has a tactic of acting completely imperceptibly and making speech about its existence primitive and obsolete. Thus he can weave a web of evil around spiritually dormant people: “Demons try to hide their reality from the human mind. As many have said, Satan’s greatest cunning was in creating the impression that he did not really exist.”[6]
However, when a person realizes and exposes the action of an evil spirit in his life, ie when his action becomes obvious, then the demon changes tactics and from trying to remain undiscovered goes to plan to intimidate man and convince him of his power beyond God’s power. Then the good angel fights with noble encouragement for man to intensify prayer and to turn more and more to the sanctity of life. The fallen angel then increasingly loses the battle to remain undiscovered and retain his old influence over man.
That is why the temptation of the evil spirit is increasing in order to prevent man on the path of holiness. In this way, against his will, he testifies to his own existence, and then to God’s existence and power, without wanting to. A man who is attacked by an evil spirit through other people or directly prays more and more and aligns his life with the will of God which is a shield and defense against evil influence.
A man who is experienced in the faith knows that whenever the temptation of a demon is great it is a sign that it is followed by great grace or blessing from God. Such a situation frustrates the demon terribly, because with the increasing temptation towards man he communicates more and more how powerless he is before God and that the spiritual reality as the Church teaches is true, so he is hurt by the knowledge that he can never escape his original role of serving God and people. Even when he is renegade into extreme evil.[7]
[1] Ignacije Lojola, Duhovne vježbe, Niko Bilić, editor (s), Biblioteka Duhovni život, Zagreb, 2005, 89.
[2] Ivan VINKOV, Obsession and Exorcism, Zagreb, Rosary Movement for Conversion and Peace, 2004, 27.
[3] I will not serve
[4] Ignacije Lojola, Duhovne vježbe, Niko Bilić, editor (s), Biblioteka Duhovni život, Zagreb, 2005, 89.
[5] Ignacije Lojola, Duhovne vježbe, Niko Bilić, editor (s), Biblioteka Duhovni život, Zagreb, 2005, 89.
[6] Ivan VINKOV, Obsession and Exorcism, Zagreb, Rosary Movement for Conversion and Peace, 2004, 67.
[7] The article was published with minor changes in: Veritas. Glasnik Sv. Antuna Padovanskog. Croatian Province of St. Jerome of the Franciscan Conventuals. Zagreb. Sveti Duh 31. No. 5. May 2022. p. 32.