The question still arises as to why God would come to us without fixing this problem of the tension between nations. Why would Jesus, God himself, come to earth through Mary and live for thirty-three years if he didn’t intend to fix this problem of the warring nations?

Well, he did. He has. He’s doing it right now. But we have to keep going. There’s more to understand. Let’s resume:

In the desert, the devil says that he rules all the nations and can give them to Jesus. I don’t know about anyone else but that always jarred me when I came across it, even as a kid. The devil owns the nations?

Then the devil took him up to a very high mountain, and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in their magnificence, and he said to him, “All these I shall give to you, if you will prostrate yourself and worship me.” (Mt 4:8)

Jesus doesn’t disagree, nor does he rebuke the devil and cast him into the sea. I was kind of hoping Jesus would just use his hand and make a crushing motion and the devil would wither and die, just like I imagine he did to the fig tree. But that is not at all what happens in the desert on the third temptation.

Jesus responds without argument about the devil’s claim to owning the nations. He doesn’t deny that the devil rules all the nations, or has the power to give them away. This is kind of mind-blowing when you grow up singing “God bless America,” and pledging “One Nation, Under God.” There is some interesting reading around this where the nations were granted oversight by demons.

Before Jesus is arrested, he mentions this again. “I will no longer talk much with you, for the ruler of this world is coming, and he has nothing in Me.” (John 14:30)

There are various places where this message is said in both the Old and New Testament.

The LORD said: Listen to whatever the people say. You are not the one they are rejecting. They are rejecting me as their king. They are acting toward you just as they have acted from the day I brought them up from Egypt to this very day, deserting me to serve other gods. (1 Samuel 8:7)

There seems to be ample evidence that what was happening with the Ziggurat at Babel has happened worldwide, among all the nations. And while I have been saying that the rulers are just telling a big lie to coalesce their power and authority, there is more happening here. God is saying in the Old Testament what Jesus is saying in the Gospels: that this motion by people toward evil is more than just a rebellious power move. God and Jesus both say that the nations are actually ruled by evil spirits; that these false gods are actually demons that rule the nations.

This is a chilling thing to consider, especially for materialists, who only see demons as ridiculous cartoon devils, or men in tights who carry pitchforks.

Jesus’ reply in the desert suggests that, yes, without a doubt, it is a fact that the devil controls the nations and has power over them. Instead of crushing the devil, Jesus quotes scripture to him, which makes the devil fold up like a lawn chair. As always, the devil’s game is to create competition and lust for power, honor, wealth, or pleasure.

Jesus doesn’t enter into the game. That’s how he wins. That’s how we win. This is important. Having authored the Ten Commandments, not to mention all sacred scripture, Jesus simply reminds the devil that the Commandments also apply to devils, and throws some Deuteronomy at him.

At this, Jesus said to him, “Get away, Satan! It is written:

‘The Lord, your God, shall you worship

and him alone shall you serve.’” (Mt 4:8-9)

Wait.

Wut?

I read that various times in life without really thinking about it, but then it struck me. What this response from Jesus suggests is that the devil has free will just like people do, just like you and I do, and so it seems the granting of power over the nations was a kind of employment for angels, who failed the leadership test and became demons. Or, more likely, as punishment for rejecting God in the Garden and at Babel, God placed fallen angels, a.k.a. demons, over the nations on purpose because we could not behave even when we had our “common language.”

When the devil is reminded that he is also subject to God’s law, and commanded to love and serve God, he flees. This is kind of a stunning moment when you stop and consider it, for multiple reasons.

This means that the Commandments are not only for people, but also for angels and demons. Spirits are also created beings, and therefore must adhere to the same regulations as other creations, such as people. Animals and plants just do what they do because they don’t have the same type of souls as us, but we have free will and intellect, like angels and demons.

We can’t leave this point behind yet.

If we know that demons rule the nations (and we do based on the conversation in the desert) and we also know that these demons have free will like us, then it seems that some spirits might follow God more closely than others do. This should also scare the hell out of you, because then the Tower of Babel story is more than just a big lie meant to scare the citizens or to give them meaning. No, instead, the Tower means that the nations worship actual demons. The people are literally selecting to worship a real demon instead of God. This means that not only is the demon fallen, but he is taking down the nation with him, starting with the rulers of the nation, the elite. This does seem to match reality, since it is always the affluent, the famous, the popular who reject God, while the poor, the outcasts, and the weak tend to embrace God. In the Gospels, the Romans, the Sadducees, and the Herodians are all more interested in their little fiefdoms than they are in God. Most interesting is Jesus’ interactions with the Pharisees, where he gets more angry with them than any of those other groups, because the Pharisees are supposed to know better. It’s like he writes off the other groups as lost sheep, but the Pharisees get scolded for failing to be shepherds.

In light of this, is it any wonder then that Jesus has come for the poor, the outcast, the diseased, and the weak? They are indeed the only ones who know the one true God. They are the ones that hear the voice of God first, because the sheep will know his voice. The rich, popular, and powerful cannot hear any voice but their own, because they worship pleasure, power, honor, and wealth.

If you understand that what happened at Babel is not just symbolic of worshipping demons, but is the actual worship of demons, it becomes a much bigger story and problem than just some ancient Napoleon telling the “Big Lie” to the masses through large public works projects. No, if the demons rule the nations, this means the nations are not “Under God” or blessed. They may only be using the word God, like Franklin and Jefferson, to amass power, to make themselves look better. I recall when I was fallen away from faith how I admired Franklin and Jefferson, but after being called back, I think they need our prayers far more than any admiration.

Free will implies that spirits can choose to follow God or reject God. It seems conceivable that if the demons that rule the nations are anything like us, then their pride will get them into trouble, just like us. Every now and then, it seems that one nation gets quite full of pride and starts bullying others, and like individual people, this bullying usually goes on until the bullied either fights back or other people step in to assist and knock down the bully. The rise and fall of nations plays out like the rise and fall of prideful people, and to those full of pride, humiliation hits hardest. This is why America in its current state seems poised for an ungraceful dive and splat.

Likewise, if demons are like people, then they may go into depression, despair, and indifference. They may want to be alone for periods of time, or even periods of self-destruction.

Where am I going with this?

There seem to be two main ways that people reject God, both stemming from pride, and nations seem to follow this cycle as well. One way of rejecting God is through presumption, and another is through despair. The two brothers in the parable of the Prodigal Son represent this pattern. One brother is elevated by his self-righteousness and legalism, and the other is brought low through self-destruction and lawlessness. People go through these cycles, just as nations do. Germany went from Weimar debauchery to full fascism due to a wild imbalance of spirit. It will happen in the United States now, as Weimar America is obviously underway. There are forces at work that can be sensed in the winds of change, if not openly observed as we stare into the widening mouth of chaos. The world of our common language is one big zero-sum game, where if I win something, you have to lose something. We can observe this happening all the time, not only at the national level, but all the way down to toddlers on the daycare floor grappling over a bottle.

What’s interesting here is that the Tower of Babel story doesn’t explicitly mention this hand-off of the nations to demons. But clearly it has happened, or Jesus would argue the point. So when did this happen? Where? How?

When the Most High allotted each nation its heritage, when he separated out human beings, He set up the boundaries of the peoples after the number of the divine beings… (Deut 32:7)

So God separated the nations, and set boundaries according to the divine beings. This is pretty clear declaration that spirits are assigned to nations. The books of Moses say so, Jesus says so, and Paul says so. In fact, Paul states plainly that other people are not the problem at all, but the world rulers and evil spirits.

Finally, draw your strength from the Lord and from his mighty power. Put on the armor of God so that you may be able to stand firm against the tactics of the devil. For our struggle is not with flesh and blood but with the principalities, with the powers, with the world rulers of this present darkness, with the evil spirits in the heavens. (Eph 6:10-12)

That’s an incredible bit of information.

Here’s some more. I’m sure that Psalm 82 and 58 have caused people’s heads to explode over the centuries when they grasp what is being said:

…the pagan gods are seen as subordinate divine beings to whom Israel’s God had delegated oversight of the foreign countries in the beginning (Dt 32:8–9). Now God arises in the heavenly assembly (Ps 82:1) to rebuke the unjust “gods”, who are stripped of divine status and reduced in rank to mortals. They are accused of misruling the earth by not upholding the poor. (from Ps 82 footnote)

…the Bible sometimes understands pagan gods to be lesser divine beings who are assigned by Israel’s God to rule the foreign nations. Here they are accused of injustice, permitting the human judges under their patronage to abuse the righteous (from Ps 58 footnote)

Now, this is a place where you can really go down a rabbit-hole and start digging. Instead of doing that, you should go sign up to help the poor, or pray, or fast for God. But since I started digging, I will continue…

Be advised, this tidbit of information about the “sons of God,” the Divine Council, being assigned to the 70 nations goes deep and requires a lot of reading. You even have to go into other books of Jewish history to really understand it. So unless you can quit your job and focus on it, you may want to just take Jesus’ word for it, that yes, spirits have been granted power over the nations.

This is one of those places where you can learn about scripture and get farther and farther from the kingdom of God. Whenever I reach these points, I have to step back and recall that I do not need to know everything, but I do know without a doubt that evil exists and that God apparently allows it to happen. Rather than get lost on the mechanics of it, I return to my standard home base, which is in Jesus’ instructions to: be baptized and believe, and keep my commandments. Serve the poor and heal the sick. I even made a little poem to help me remember it:

Repent and believe and sin no more.

Pray and fast and feed the poor. 

But I do think that to understand anything that happens with Jesus, you have to realize that there is more to this world than just chemistry and physics. The dragons are real, and they are driving this world, and they cannot be defeated without the help of God. This is the paradox of control. You have to give up control to get control. You have to admit your weakness to slay the dragon, because you cannot do it alone, but you can with God. And that goes for temptations in your own life or enduring injustice in the world.

We can’t possibly know the “why” of everything, and this is the classic blunder of those who reject God. Wanting to know the mind of God leads to bad patterns and pride. The problem of pain and suffering is the obvious perennial question that people ask about God, causing millions to turn away. However, if you come to see that Jesus is God, then his every word becomes fact. His every step to the cross becomes the answer. There is no other answer, or not one that satisfies. Forgiveness and transforming suffering into good just simply works if you work the program, if you believe when it is hardest to believe. We are allowed rage prayers, so let it out. Psalm 88 is one for those days where nothing makes sense.

If Jesus agrees that the nations are ruled by evil spirits or the devil, then the believer agrees. That is the act of faith in action. Yes, this is a stumbling block for those just dipping their toes in the baptismal waters of the Christian life. But surrendering your self to Christ requires this leap.

However, I don’t think it’s that difficult of a stretch to believe that something evil drives the nations, that something is rotten in the state of Denmark (and all the others). The unending treachery and division among nations makes for a permanent game of chess, and where one nation oversteps, another is all too pleased to play the victim whilst the victim does the same overt or underhanded work elsewhere. This is, after all, the common language of all people - competition and greed, anger and wrath. We all speak Original Sin. We all speak Babel.

If spirits are subject to the same laws as we are, the same commandments, then it would seem that some nations might have a more balanced spirit guiding them than others. Or if these spirits are warring, then we are within that war. The lesson is something strange, but something liberating and powerful, because it gets you fully outside of the box, the wall, and into the fullness of time and space, and even a bit beyond without going cuckoo.

We are living within a Spiritual War.

The seasons of a person’s life can lead to great heights of presumption, or self-righteousness, which can then lead to great, public falls. When a truly self-righteous, presumptuous demon rules a nation, can’t we almost see it? Don’t we even kind of celebrate it? They are all the nations that we talk about the most in terms of history. Ancient Egypt, the Neo-Assyrian Empire, the Macedonian Empire, Rome, Nazi Germany, the British Empire, the Soviet Union, the First French Empire, the Spanish Empire, Imperial Japan, North Korea, America, and now rising China. We don’t seek out Polish history like we do the Roman Empire, even though Poland has been in the middle of many wars. Could it be that the ruling spirit of a nation is real? I always thought it was just lazy titles, but when The Economist runs a story every two years with the title, “The Battle for Latin America’s Soul” (or England, or Mongolia, or Canada) they may actually be correct. A spirit is in fact ruling each nation, and like people, these demons are playing out the same zero-sum games that we do.

Well, this is hard to deal with at first, but, if you believe that Jesus is the Son of God, the second person of the Trinity, then the exchange in the desert with the devil must be taken as fact.

And that is yet another life changing revelation from the scripture. I used to think people were crazy to believe that praying the Rosary could help our country, or help stop a foreign war. But no longer. Now I believe it’s crazy not to pray, because once you believe in a soul, in God, in Jesus, you know that there is much more happening in this world than what we can see. Hamlet knew as much. He told Horatio that the ghost was real, and Horatio’s rational Enlightenment mind was blown apart when he saw it.

We know that we have guardian angels, who, we certainly hope, are good spirits. The word angel implies that it is a spirit in God’s army, not aligned with the devil. Demon implies “evil.” Ain’t nobody want no demon watching over them. If anything, the demon waits for our guardian angel to look away and hopes we slip.

Now, if spirits have free-will, then the spirit that is appointed to each nation can make a huge difference in the direction of that nation. A nation who is ruled by a demon that rejects God should then be easy to spot. Furthermore, if spirits are like people, they may go through phases, or periods where they follow God’s commandments more closely than at other times. Like drunks that fall off the wagon and get back on, spirits may be able to slip and recover. But given that the word demon implies “evil,” I think it’s safer to bend negative here. I would like to believe that some nations have a gentle guardian watching them, like Egypt or Poland who keeps getting steamrolled across the centuries. Could it be that the nations we do not talk about are cursed? Or are they rather like lambs, ruled by more meek and humble spirits, while the superpowers are ruled by “those who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls,” as we say in the prayer of St. Michael?

The idea of a “national spirit” will never be the same again to me because of the Tower of Babel and Jesus’ dialogue in the desert.

All of this brings up the next point, which actually begins to explain where I fit into this “hierarchy.” I thought I held a higher rank, like a Captain, or at least a Sergeant, but I didn’t realize that I am not even a Private in this story. There is something far bigger happening around us than that what we can see with our five senses.

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