God, Angels, Demons, Divine Beings, Free Will

What does it mean that Deuteronomy chapter 32, verses 8 to 9, says God portioned 70 nations to 70 divine beings and kept Israel for themself to rule over? What kind of beings invisible to us exist?

“Paul genuinely disagreed [with pagan beliefs] and genuinely believed that everybody needed to know about Jesus and Yahweh. And yet he was not derogatory and I think was actually sympathetic to understanding why people that weren’t Jews would be worshipping other gods.” Almost Heretical podcast, episode 7 of their series Rethinking the Fall.

A few weeks ago, I heard a new-to-me concept: gods rule the nations. Huh? Isn’t there only one God? Yes, but…

“When the Most High apportioned the nations, when he divided humankind, he fixed the boundaries of the peoples according to the number of the gods; the Lord’s own portion was his people, and Jacob his allotted share.” Deu 32: 8-9

I spent a few weeks cogitating on this translation and what the Anglican minister had talked about in relation to it. Today, I dug into it and came across the above podcast and several discussions on Reddit, such as Did ancient Jews view other nations deities as simply mythology creatures that were man made, or as deities that were lesser beings than Yahweh?

Photo by Marek Piwnicki on Unsplash

Do Supernatural Beings Known as Small-G gods Exist?

According to the new understanding of Deuteronomy 32: 8-9 and Paul’s writings on the other gods, which he called “demons,” Paul struggled with two events.

1. God manifesting as Jesus, and Jesus choosing to sacrifice himself.

2. The chosen people was to help Yahweh reinherit the nations and bring them back into relationship with God out from under the relationships with these other gods. Paul saw Pentecost was the time to do that. It’s why he believed he needed to reach all known nations to do that. Evangelism was to confront these other gods and to tell their religious followers, “to say, hey, you’ve been worshipping such and such god but Yahweh is the true Creator god that created all things.” Almost Heretical podcast.

The podcasters state secularization is an output from Christianity. Thinking about it, it’s true. Before Christianity, perhaps even up until the Reformation, all peoples followed one or another religion, believed in one or many gods. Paul wanted to dethrone all of these gods that God had delegated responsibility to at the time of Babel, so that God can reclaim rulership over all peoples and cultures. Christianity successfully dethroned those other gods¹, but created a choice between is there a God, or is there not? Unlike us, Paul lived in a world where the choice was between God or one of the gods.

Jesus Began God’s Plan to Reclaim the Nations from the Small-g gods

Luke narrated in chapter 10 how Jesus began reclaiming the nations back to God.

“After this the Lord appointed seventy others and sent them on ahead of him in pairs to every town and place where he himself intended to go.” Jesus instructed them, including saying, “Yet know this: the kingdom of God has come near. I tell you, on that day it will be more tolerable for Sodom than for that town.” Luke 10: 1,11,12

Seventy here matches the seventy nations that God apportioned to the gods to rule over.

When the seventy returned, they rejoiced, “‘Lord, in your name even the demons submit to us!’ He said to them, ‘I watched Satan fall from heaven like a flash of lightning. See, I have given you authority to tread on snakes and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy; and nothing will hurt you. Nevertheless, do not rejoice at this, that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.” Luke 11: 17-20

Snakes reminds us of the snake in the Garden of Eden, a metaphor for the evil that somehow appeared in God’s Creation. How is a mystery. But I think about how when I write a novel, my intentions don’t include events and characterizations that emerge during the creating. The Creative force is inherently not logical or runs in a straight line. Emergents appear, and that’s what makes creation an unpredictable and exciting force.

Is it true that in the face of the Fall, God changed their plan for humanity to rescue us from these unexpected evil emergents and so apportioned much of the world to gods? And chose Israel as the original light to all the nations — start with a small reclamation and end by reclaiming the whole?

One Nation Ruled by One of the Small-g gods

I turned to the Gathas. I am, after all, half Zoroastrian, one of the nations that exists to today that would’ve been put under the rule of one of these gods.

Zarathustra prophesied to his people at a time when they “were the shepherd and herdsmen on the one hand, and the learned Kavis, together with the Karapans, on the other. All believed in many gods, some benvolent, others evil. Both powers had to be placated with bloody sacrifices of the cow or ox.” The Gathas of Zarathustra, page 71.

This pagan worship repeated itself over and over across nations. It’s as if the original god given to rule these peoples ascribed worship to themself by substituted themself for God — misrepresenting themself as the Creative force behind the universe — which corrupted their own moral compass until the ruled turned to animal sacrifice.

Zarathustra pushed back against this corruption when he preached of one Supreme Being, Ahura Mazda, the good and the wise. He also described the rise of evil, Angra Mainyu the Hostile Spirit, as bursting out of the bowels of the Earth; and the cry of the living spirit of Gaush Urva who questioned Ahura Mazda about who will protect Creation and who will teach reverence for every living thing.

Zarathustra wrote in Gatha Ahunavaiti, the Gatha of Free Choice. The Lament of Gaush Urva: Text Yasna 29:

“Mazda is the supreme knower of all actions, past and present, performed by men and even by the Daevas. He is the sole discriminating Lord of such misguided individuals.”

According to Piloo Nanavutty, “Zarathustra uses the word ‘Daeva’ to signify False Gods, and the Worshippers of False Gods, the Daeva-yasni.”

In other words, it seems that Zarathustra during his 20 years of meditations gained insight into the rulers of the nations. Each culture will use different metaphors to say the same thing, especially ancient cultures who more naturally thought in stories and imagery and metaphors than we do.

The Revelation to the Early Christians

“And war broke out in heaven; Michael and his angels fought against the dragon. The dragon and his angels fought back, but they were defeated, and there was no longer any place for them in heaven.” Rev 12:7

I wondered: are the gods who ruled the nations demons? This passage in Revelation 12 seems to connote not. Satan was the Accuser, the one who stood before God’s throne and accused Job of being a fly-by-night worshipper until God agreed to remove the hedge of protection around Job, except for Job’s life, in order to prove Job was no such thing.

So Satan isn’t one of the gods.

Are Satan’s angels who, upon being thrown down to earth, became demons, the gods who ruled the nations? It doesn’t seem so because, as I wrote in my post on Revelation 12, demons possessed humans. The gods alluded to in Deuteronomy don’t possess. They rule. And people, not understanding this and conflating the gods with God, began worshipping them.

Yet Paul refers to them as demons.

Paul wrote to the new Christians in Corinth about the gods that God had apportioned the nations to at the time of Babel.

“I imply that what pagans sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons and not to God. I do not want you to be partners with demons. You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. You cannot partake of the table of the Lord and the table of demons. Or are we provoking the Lord to jealousy? Are we stronger than he?” 1 Cor 10: 20-22

Those last two are rhetorical questions. Here, we learn that the gods are demons or they became demons as they ruled the nations and encouraged evil to rise and dominate our affairs. And, boy, are we seeing that today! And thinking about that, have those gods — those demons — been vanquished? They no longer rule the nations, perhaps, but they still rule vast numbers of people.

I’m reminded of Jesus’s warning: woe to those who mislead his sheep. Jesus seems to be saying, in effect, that the gods or demons will continue to remain active for millennia, even though the evangelism that Peter, the apostles, Paul, and Mary began seemingly dethroned them.

A side note: some interpret “gods” as sons of Israel or “sons of God.” I think the latter is wrong, for God stated clearly that Jesus was God’s one and only son. The NRSV translation that I’ve used here is more and more being recognized as the correct one. Its allusion to supernatural beings contradicts our science-oriented world, where only what we can see, hear, smell, touch, and taste with our physical senses is considered real — all else are myths subject to “knowledgeable” scoffing. But in some parts of the world, outside of condescending North America, spirits are seen as much a part of reality as this keyboard I’m typing on.

Putting Together This Different View of the Spiritual Realm

So how do we put all this together? I think mystery challenges understanding. We, shaped by centuries of dogmatic scientific thinking, which demands we know or it doesn’t exist, and allows for no middle ground of mystery, find it difficult to reconcile the supernatural with the material.

What Does Power Mean?

How do we see God as all powerful? Can a being with all power not be in control? We’re raised up in a hierarchical model of absolute control by the leader at the top. Even Star Trek has the captains making the final decision or simply taking all authority unto themselves. Yet God accedes to Satan to torture Job; Ahura Mazda can partially protect the Bull that they created “from the Earth on the banks of the river Daiti (Oxus) which runs through the middle of the Earth,” yet not prevent the Hostile Spirit Angra Mainyu from killing it or, earlier, the Man, whom Ahura Mazda had also created from the river banks.

Who Is Behind the Evil We See in the World?

The podcasters Nathan and Tim talked about how we see God and humans as being the only existing beings. Thus the question of who brings evil upon us leads us to the answer that God does. But when we broaden our understanding by reading and thinking deeper, we see that there are many existing beings who bring evil.

I’d add that Zoroastrians believe that we walk hand in hand with God. It isn’t sufficient to leave all the work to eradicate evil to God. We, too, must work with God and work to foster good thoughts, good words, good deeds in order to bring the world towards God’s original intention.

Jesus also ascribes this view in the Sermon on the Mount when he talked about us being salt and light.

Does this mean God and evil (Satan, Angra Mainyu, demons, whatever) are equal? Hardly. It does mean that when God created the universe(s), God intended for Creation to have free will and Creation somehow manifested evil, which God has a plan to eradicate but wants us to join in. In addition, all powerful doesn’t mean all controlling.

In Psalm 82, David sang, “God has taken his place in the divine council; in the midst of the gods he holds judgement: ‘How long will you judge unjustly and show partiality to the wicked?…I say, ‘You are gods, children of the Most High, all of you; nevertheless, you shall die like mortals, and fall like any prince.’”

Revelation shows how they die. The Beast and the Monster, followed by the Dragon, are thrown into the Lake of Fire. I’m rather excited about writing novel 3 when I’ll imagine and write about these events and how humans will live during and after that.

But I digress. It’s clear the Psalmist saw that God does not control but has all power. For God gives them a chance, like God gives us, to reform their ways before deciding enough is enough. That’s when God sent Jesus as the first salvo.

The Plan of Unconditional Love

Becoming human and divine, the Word came to Earth as Jesus in order to reconcile humans with God and to revoke the authority of these gods whom God had made rulers of the nations and who had subsequently corrupted themselves and the peoples they ruled over. God, through Jesus, intends to reclaim all peoples and to save all humanity. For God doesn’t want to say goodbye to any of us. That’s what unconditional love is. We are living in the midst of this salvation plan.

As I write The Q’Zam’Ta Trilogy, I wonder how to incorporate these writings and ideas into Act II, when my protagonist Charlotte Elisabeth is sent back to Earth to continue her Soul Track and reconcile her broken relationships. Who are the ghosts? How do you distinguish ghosts from demons? Will she see angels? Are the dethroned rulers of the nations all dethroned and where did they go? What do you think?

1. Have they successfully all been dethroned? If they had, wouldn’t all religions do more than acknowledge Jesus as a prophet? Wouldn’t they follow Jesus as God incarnated: human, divine, resurrected?