Gwen Frangs / Templemore / 25 February 2024
It would seem that in the same way that a Christian is the temple of the Holy Spirit, a non-believer in Jesus is the temple of another spirit, which the Apostle Paul wrote about to the church in Ephesus:
2 As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, 2 in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient.
Ephesians 2:1-2 NIV
Therefore, according to the Bible, there seems to be no escaping the fact that a spirit lives within the human being and it is up to each human being to choose which spirit it is going to be. This is why a person is either in the kingdom of light or in the kingdom of darkness. According to the Bible, if you have accepted Jesus as Lord, you are in the kingdom of light, because He is living in you as the Holy Spirit. However, if you have not accepted Jesus, this other spirit, which Paul calls the ‘ruler of the kingdom of the air’, is living in you. It would seem that human beings were, from the beginning of our creation, meant to be the temple of a spirit – the Holy Spirit, and that those who will inherit eternal life, will be those who have the Holy Spirit within them. This is a return to how things were meant to be.
One wonders how the ‘ruler of the kingdom of the air’ got into people in the first place, if it was the Holy Spirit Who was there? I can only speculate that the Holy Spirit departed from our ancestors when they embraced sin, and that the ‘ruler of the kingdom of the air’ moved in to fill the vacancy that was left behind by the Holy Spirit.
The ‘ruler of the kingdom of the air’ bears a striking resemblance to the Hindu god, Vishnu. In Hinduism, Vishnu literally means ‘Pervader’. My understanding from reading about Vishnu is that he is called ‘Pervader’ because he is seen to pervade everything, including people. According to Vaishnavism, which is a denomination within Hinduism, Vishnu is the primal Atman. Atman is a Sanskrit word for the self-existent essence of each individual. So, according to Vaishnavism, each individual has Vishnu living within them and Vishnu is the essence of the person. This sounds to me very much like what Paul was saying when he spoke about the ‘ruler of the kingdom of the air’ working within the sons of disobedience. According to Vaishnavism, Vishnu also has a definite form. He has the form of a blue man, with four arms, and he sleeps on a serpent. I will be talking about this ‘form’ of Vishnu in Part 2 of this topic and about the form of the Holy Spirit.
The scary thing for everyone is that non-believers in Christ have this entity working within them and they don’t even know it. They think that they are entirely in control of themselves and that they are the masters of their own lives and the forgers of their own destiny. However, it would seem that non-believers are actually enslaved to the ‘ruler of the power of the air’ because he is influencing them, at the very core or essence of their being. According to the Bible, Jesus came to free us from this false ruler and to pay for our sins, so that the Holy Spirit could again take up residence within us.
One has to wonder what the ‘ruler of the kingdom of the air’ is doing in non-Christians? I would say that what he is doing – first and foremost – is blinding people regarding their need for the Holy Spirit. When Christians talk about the fact that they are saved, what they are ultimately saying is that the ‘ruler of the kingdom of the air’ has had to vacate living in them and has become replaced by the Holy Spirit. Therefore, a Christian has been freed from the influence of the ‘ruler of the power of the air’ living within them. That is indeed a cause for celebration! After a person accepts Christ, the Holy Spirit, Who is a spirit of love, moves in and starts to put love in their hearts for God and their fellow man. Therefore, the essence of a true Christian is love.
Within modern day Christianity, Satan is seen to be at the top of the hierarchy of evil. It is commonly taught within the Christian church that the ‘ruler of the kingdom of the air’ is Satan; however, this is unlikely. If you speak to members of the Satanic church they will tell you that the name of Satan is Enki. This is a reference to a god that was worshipped by the ancient Sumerians and Mesopotamians. In ancient Sumeria and ancient Mesopotamia, Enki was worshipped as the Lord of the Earth and the name ‘Enki’ literally means ‘Lord of the Earth’. However, in ancient Sumeria and Mesopotamia there was a higher power than Enki, called Enlil, which is translated ‘Lord of the air’, or ‘Lord Ghost’. The bad news for us all, is that Satan probably isn’t at the top of the hierarchy of evil, rather it is this Lord of the air, Enlil, who occupies that position. Proof of what I am saying can be found in the Book of Revelation. In the Book of Revelation we are told that Satan and his angels will go into the great fire called Gehenna. If Satan and his angels were behind all of the sin on the earth, one would assume that their going into this great fire would mean that there would not be any further sin on the earth. However, the Book of Revelation speaks of sin continuing to exist after Satan and his angels have gone into the fire:
22 I did not see a temple in the city, because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. 23 The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp. 24 The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their splendor into it. 25 On no day will its gates ever be shut, for there will be no night there. 26 The glory and honor of the nations will be brought into it. 27 Nothing impure will ever enter it, nor will anyone who does what is shameful or deceitful, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life.
Revelation 21:22-27 NIV
We see from verse 27 that impurity and people who do shameful and deceitful acts will still exist, even when Satan and his angels are in the great fire and no longer active in causing sin on the earth. This points to the fact that the ‘ruler of the kingdom of the air’ will continue to exist, even when there is a new Earth, and that he will continue to be a problem. There can be no doubt that ‘the ruler of the kingdom of the air’ is a formidable enemy. It is possible that he was active in causing evil, even before Satan fell. If this is the case, then Heaven has been defending itself against this enemy for a very long time and this would explain why there are armies of angels in Heaven. Presumably, he will continue to try and separate human beings from the one true God even in the new dispensation when there is a new Heaven and a new Earth. Human beings will need to continue to rely on the Holy Spirit to help them to resist the influence of this entity. Hopefully, we will get it right this time.