Reformed books on angels and demons?

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Reverend Winzer,
Do you see any identifying traits and prescriptions in Jude chapter 1? A lot of people make identifications and applications based upon that text. And from what I note from that passage the ordinary means of Grace are what we are to focus on.

I also have a question about the word spirits. What is implied by the word as they were preached to and they are to be recognized in false prophets?
1Pe_3:19 By which also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison;

1Jn_4:1 Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world.
 
Do you see any identifying traits and prescriptions in Jude chapter 1? A lot of people make identifications and applications based upon that text. And from what I note from that passage the ordinary means of Grace are what we are to focus on.

Randy, do you have a specific verse in mind? Verse 6 perhaps? "And the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day." This teaches that fallen angles are judicially bound by God. It means at the least that fallen angels are not floating around doing whatever pleases them. What this means in terms of their involvement in human affairs is difficult to say, but I recognise that God providentially employs them as instruments of justice in the same way that He uses the sins of men in the judgment of sinners.

Scripture teaches that Christ has spoiled principalities and powers, Col. 2, and gives this as a reason against "voluntary humility and worshipping of angels." This satisfies me that I should reject any teaching which requires me to intrude into those things which I have not seen, including the idea that we are to confront "demons." But my understanding is that even "demons" are nothing in the sense that pagans hold to them, as hero-gods. The dead have been judged and have gone to their own place; and they do not influence human life apart from the false teaching which is spread concerning them.

I also have a question about the word spirits. What is implied by the word as they were preached to and they are to be recognized in false prophets?
1Pe_3:19 By which also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison;

1Jn_4:1 Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world.

I interpret the spirits in 1 Peter 3:9 to be the human beings that lived at the time of Noah; and I consider the preaching to have been done through the instrumentality of Noah at that time.

1 John 4:1 is debated. I incline to the view that says a "spirit" is a doctrine purported to be given by inspiration of the Spirit.
 
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