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Learn From God’s Word

How Do Spirit Creatures Affect Us?

How Do Spirit Creatures Affect Us?

This article considers questions you may have raised and shows where you can read the answers in your Bible. Jehovah’s Witnesses would be pleased to discuss these answers with you.

1. Who are the angels?

Angels are spirit creatures who live in heaven. They are a higher form of life than human life. The true God, who is himself a spirit, created the angels before he created the earth. (Job 38:4, 7; Matthew 18:10) Jehovah has surrounded himself with millions of loyal angels.​—Read Psalm 103:20, 21; Daniel 7:9, 10.

2. Do angels help people?

Angels helped a righteous man named Lot. He lived in a city that God had determined to destroy because of the people’s badness. Two angels warned Lot and his family to flee. Some people considered the warning a joke and ignored it. But Lot and his daughters survived because they obeyed the warning that God had sent by means of angels.​—Read Genesis 19:1, 13-17, 26.

According to the Bible, angels are helping people today by directing the work of those who faithfully preach the good news of God’s Kingdom. (Matthew 24:14) The good news includes a warning. Like the warning given to Lot, it is no joke. It comes from God through angels.​—Read Revelation 1:1; 14:6, 7.

God can use angels to strengthen us when we face trials. He used an angel to strengthen Jesus.​—Read Luke 22:41-43.

Soon God will use angels in another way​—to eliminate wicked people who cause suffering. That will bring delightful relief to mankind.​—Read 2 Thessalonians 1:6-8.

3. How do demons affect us?

Just as many people on earth have acted badly by disobeying God, so also in heaven many angels have rebelled against God. (2 Peter 2:4) Disobedient angels are called demons. Foremost among them is Satan, the Devil. Satan and his demons are misleading mankind.​—Read Revelation 12:9.

Satan has used corrupt businesses, human governments, and false religions to influence people and to turn them away from God. Thus, Satan is responsible for the injustice, violence, and suffering that afflict mankind.​—Read 1 John 5:19.

4. How do demons mislead people?

Satan has deceived many people by teaching that the dead become spirits that can communicate with them. The Bible, however, says that the dead can do nothing at all. (Ecclesiastes 9:5) But demons often deceive people by imitating the voice of dead loved ones. (Isaiah 8:19) Demons mislead others through spirit mediums, fortune-tellers, and practicers of divination and astrology. God’s Word warns us to avoid all such practices. So we should discard anything in our possession that is related to the demons and the occult.​—Read Deuteronomy 18:10, 11; Acts 19:19.

If we love Jehovah, we do not need to live in fear of the demons. When we study God’s Word and do as it says, we oppose the Devil and draw close to God. Jehovah is more powerful than the demons. His faithful angels can strengthen us in time of need.​—Read Psalm 34:7; James 4:7, 8.

For more information, see chapter 10 of this book, What Does the Bible Really Teach?, published by Jehovah’s Witnesses.