Membership Bible Training: Session 2 — Part 2
Introduction
This is part of a series discussing Membership Bible Training. Previous sessions:
This post covers Part 2 of Session 2 of Membership Bible Training (MBT), as taught by former staff pastor Landon Nagata at Vista Church (San Luis Obispo, California). It was taught on February 3rd, 2020. This article has four sections.
Not what an angel looks like. We think.
Intro: Description of the audio
Length, topics, date, and speaker, fully recycled from my article on MBT Session 2 - Part 1.
Disclaimers are fully recycled from my article on MBT Session 2 - Part 1, but please read them if you haven’t before.
The audio and transcript
A Table of Contents
Content Analysis: A chronological, but not fully exhaustive, analysis of the points taught
This post covers the second and third major points:
Angels
Demons
About the recording
Nothing new from MBT Session 2 - Part 1. If you’ve already read those, then skip this, but read if you have not.
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The audio is an hour and thirty-five minutes of teaching, over 15,000 words. It’s the second of seven sessions. This session covers the following major topics:
- What is Creation?
- What are angels and demons? (This is in this article)
- Cultural Issue: Homosexuality and Same-sex Marriage
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Nagata had previously taught this same session in 2019, though I do not have the audio for that. Vista Church taught MBT first in 2019, and then again in 2020. It was not held in 2021 and I do not know if it’s been taught in 2022, and Nagata would not have taught it in 2022 even if there was.
The audio is easily dated to 2020 instead of 2019 by two marks:
- Nagata references a “fridge in the back”, which indicates he was in the Vista Office, not the Vets Hall where 2019’s training was held.
- Nagata references the worship leader (Ken) coming to lead worship after he finishes small group. In 2019, all small groups were canceled so that people could attend MBT.
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Landon Nagata was a member of the church plant team. He was brought on staff as a pastor, if memory serves, sometime in 2017. He was, as with most pastors, young and lacking in many traits a church might normally hire for. Lead Pastor Luke Williams made Nagata a small group leader no more than a few months before making him a pastor. His character was uneven and his biblical knowledge was weak, which I believe you will see as we go through this, more than two years later.
Nagata was removed as a staff pastor, moved into an “administrative role”, in a move that was announced in late 2020 at a Team Vista (and no other announcement). He left the administrative role within a few months after that and started working outside the church. This was never announced to the church. The church did not share a reason for Landon’s removal as a staff pastor, but he told me it was for two incidents of alcohol consumption to the point of “buzzed”, and failure to tell Williams about it. You can read more about that in my previous article, which has been live for nearly four months and I have not heard any refutation or correction of it.
Nagata is still a Small Group Leader at Vista Church.
Nagata is teaching this under the leadership of Lead Pastor Luke Williams. Williams is one of the six members of the Network Leadership Team, according to Leaving the Network. He is believed to oversee the churches on the west coast including Blue Sky Church (Bellevue, WA), Hills Church (Pullman, WA), Summit Creek Church (Eugene, OR), and Valley Springs Church (Corvalis, OR).
Disclaimers
Identical to MBT Session 2 - Part 1, if you already read that, but please read if you haven’t previously read it.
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Transcription errors (or other feedback!) can be reported to not.overcome@outlook.com.
I’ve used a transcription service to create the original transcription, and then I’ve hand-edited it to improve accuracy Transcribed teachings always lose something from the delivered version — speaking is a different art than writing — and this is no exception. The transcription is provided as an aid, not as the authoritative record, and undoubtedly contains errors. That said, I hope it’s helpful. A couple things you will see as you go:
- A lot of doubled words or phrases – this is actually a pretty normal thing for people to do, and I don’t judge Williams for it. I suspect a public speaking coach would want to work on it, but it’s pretty natural. Most verbal pauses are automatically removed by the transcription service, so you won’t see too many of those in the writing (um, uh).
- A few times you will see me use square brackets [like this]. You can effectively read right over those – they are places where either I couldn’t understand, Williams misspeaks a whole phrase and starts over, or something similar.
- I do not guarantee the accuracy of this transcription, and encourage people to listen to the audio of any section they find interesting, particularly if you intend on taking any kinds of actions based on what you find here.
- Timestamps are provided throughout the transcription, in general at least once every two minutes, and I’ve tried to use them to delineate new sections as well.
- Punctuation is difficult in transcription precisely because it’s not actually spoken. I’ve done my best, and added quote marks, but somewhat inconsistently. You can probably infer most of it, and I’ll get better at it as I do more transcriptions
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In this article, I’ve extracted a number of specific clips so that you can play them inline as you read my comments. In most cases, they are uncut clips. If I splice more than one clip together, I insert a sound effect (whoosh) to mark switching from one clip to the next, and noted it in the transcription of that clip.
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In the full audio and clips, the only editing I have done is to clean up the sound quality:
- equalizer for voice clarity (this is a matter of preference, but I’ve attempted to use settings that made it easiest to understand, while still sounding very much like Nagata’s natural speaking voice).
- background noise reduction
- volume leveling applied consistently start-to-finish – I have not attempted to normalize Nagata’s volume segment-to-segment or do anything that would otherwise affect his content or tone.
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Why Full Audio: In my reporting on The Network, it is my view that recordings like these are in the public interest, for those who are in or out of The Network, and am sharing them for that reason. I would only share the clips, like a book review, except I believe it’s important for people to be able to hear the entire thing, to know that I’ve shared all relevant context. Not to mention, others will undoubtedly notice important things that I have missed.
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I’m not a Biblical scholar or Theologian. Any and all Biblical insight below comes with a caveat that I recommend doing your own research. My main point is to show that there are other viewpoints, where Nagata might claim to be stating the only valid one. Some critiques below are style, others are substance, and some are both. Please pay attention to which is which.
I’m not a perfect writer - corrections and feedback are welcome on either the reddit or by emailing me at not.overcome@outlook.com.
Listen and Read
This audio starts at the 24:11 mark of the main teaching, immediately following the cut off from Part 1.
Table of Contents
A Key Theme: Certainty
A quick call out - Landon Nagata is about to cover a subject that demands humility. Little is said about angels or demons in the Bible. In fact, I suspect that if you read every single passage about either in the Bible, and read them allowed, it’d take less time than this. Theories abound, and even Grudem says “we don’t know” a fair amount.
But, again, Nagata speaks with a high degree of certainty about some of these topics. It’s unwarranted, and he’d be far better off saying, “here’s a couple views - we’re not sure.”
Topic #2: Angels
Nagata spends the next 16+ minutes talking about angels. His points are roughly:
Angels are created beings, like us.
They intercede in the world on our behalf.
They don’t look like they do in the Hallmark store, they look like the description in Daniel 10:2-14. (he actually spends a fair amount of time on this, you can listen for yourself, but I haven’t excerpted it).
You don’t have a personal guardian angel, but rather angels “play zone”
You should not worship angels.
That’s pretty much it. I agree with all of those points, and I think most protestants would. However, if you listen (starts at 24:49), I think you’ll agree that he did not need to take 16 minutes to say it, especially with everyone having already read the chapter in Christian Beliefs about this. The Network’s teachers do not respect their audience’s time - being willing to restate things over and over (Williams does this much more, and you’ll see a more egregious example of it in part 3 of this session).
Jesus at Gethsemane
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(@27:57) In Matthew chapter 26, verse 53. It's inspiring to read this about Jesus's arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane. Like he says, "Do you think I cannot appeal to my father and he will at one send me more than 12 legions of angels?" Right? Isn't that fascinating to think that Jesus as he was being arrested, could of said, like with a snap of his fingers, "Father send the legions of angels" and at once the legion of angels would have been sent. But it's so humble to see that Jesus once again, this beautiful part of the Trinity, submitting himself before God's creations, his creatures, who were not very kind to Jesus at the time, right. Spit on him, would beat him, would harass him, and they crucified him, because Jesus loved us so dearly.
First, it’s unclear what exactly this passage has to do with angels, other than if maybe Nagata just checked a concordance on “angels” and was reading all the verses he could find.
Second, this is one of the verses that most strongly points against the doctrine of “eternal subordination of the son” (link is to previous discussion of this on MBT #1), because it shows that Jesus was not required by the Father to go to the cross. Jesus is very specific that he could ask God the Father for the angels, and that the Father would send them, meaning the Father was totally ok with that. This is key, because if Jesus was only “submitting” to the Father (he didn’t want to go, but the Father commanded him to), then this changes the cross away from an act of self-giving love to one of self-interest. Jesus would have effectively only had two choices:
Go to the cross.
Disobey the father (sin)
If the result of that sin was hell, same as anyone else, then Jesus was simply coerced into it. It’s actually really, really important that Jesus had a choice, because that’s how we know Jesus did it out of love and not self-preservation.
Now, Nagata doesn’t actually say this is Jesus submitting to the father (Williams taught that explicitly in either March or April 2021, focusing on Jesus prayer “not my will but yours be done”), he says (maybe - the grammar is hard to follow) it’s Jesus submitting to people, which isn’t really borne out by the text either. Jesus says in John 10:17-18: “For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life that I may take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This charge I have received from my Father.”
Man vs. Zone; Nagata vs. Paull
The following is a compilation of two clips:
Landon Nagata, in this teaching, starting at 36:05.
Sándor Paull (said to be Vice President of The Network), teaching at the joint Christland Church/Rock River Church retreat in Fall 2020. This is from session 2, and the clip comes at 42:00.
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What Grudem says, contrary to what popular belief is of this Guardian pet Angel, is that maybe it's a zone rather than a one on one. If any, you guys have played football, basketball, it's this zone kind of defense of every defender is set in their rightful spot on the court or on the field. And it's meant to protect that area. That's what Grudem is describing here is that angels are just kind of zone defense rather than a personal everyone gets their own angel. All you guys in this room, get your own angel. It's like it's not like a pet or like a Furby or anything like that. It's different. Okay.
[transition marked by whoosh sound]
(@ 0:38 in clip) Did I tell you about my theory about about guardian angels? Or was that first service? First service? Alright, here's another theory, we'll find out someday if I'm right or not. Theologians differ on if we have an individual guardian angel. Theologian Wayne Grudem would say "It's possible," because Jesus talks about little kids and nobody coming against them because their angel is always heard by their father in heaven. That's kind of the most biblical evidence that there are actual guardian angels assigned to each specific human. Grudem uses a unbiblical example of maybe they play zone defense and not man to man. I kind of don't care about non-biblical analogies that sort of are useless. [mocking voice] "Oh, it could be that angels are like neutrons that flow through the cosmos until the neutrinos and..." Who cares? Like, you're just making up stuff. But so in the Bible, the point is, in the Bible, there is a possibility that there are specific guardian angels assigned to us. Not just in general, but assigned. You ever found that in times of giving yourself over to sin, that it feels like there is a grieving of the Holy Spirit, which we'll talk about, but it feels like things kind of go bad for a while. It's like, it feels like some of that protection that we get used to is sort of affected for a time. You ever notice that? Here's my theory. What if what we're doing is actually weakening our guardian angel's ability to protect us spiritually. And it takes a while for that dude to recover his strength because we've actually wounded and weakened, incapacitated him and his spiritual protection and things that are out of our realm. I've always wondered that. Like, what if it actually does that? And what if our poor guardian angel's like, "Dude, you're not helping me. Like, I'm here for you, but you're not making my life any easier." And then we struggle for a bit until he like recovers. I don't know. I'm just guessing. Who knows?
Ok, I could say so much about this, because Nagata’s teaching is unwaveringly confident (his voice in the clip is even more confident and dismissive of the idea of a guardian angel). Then, Sándor Paull then gives a teaching that made my jaw drop even when I was in The Network. Paull’s teaching says, in summary:
Grudem says maybe it’s zone or man, probably zone.
That’s an unbiblical analogy and those are useless. (negating Nagata’s teaching entirely)
So, here’s a theory I made up (that he already said at “first service” - this isn’t just him making something up in the moment)
These teachings are separated by at most 9 months.
First, Nagata likely should have said “we’re not sure.” Instead he compares the idea of a guardian angel to that of a personal “furby”. Then Paull throws Grudem under the bus. First, “zone vs. man” is pretty much the two options for how to cover something. You can either assign one angel to each person, or you can have each angel cover an area or a set of people, either fixed or somewhat overlapping/nebulous. I suppose the third option would be a “dispatch” sort of option, where all the angels are somewhere, and waiting to be sent to help with specific incidents, but they never attach to an area, person, or group of persons. Even this is still kind of a “zone.” To be honest, this is where the doctrine of the sufficiency of scripture is helpful, because we could just say, “The Bible didn’t tell us, so we probably don’t need to know.”
Instead, Paull goes and just invents and teaches a whole new doctrine in which our sin harms our specific guardian angel in some way. I’m glad he includes, “Who knows?” at the end, but especially right after throwing Grudem under the bus for an “unbiblical analogy”, it seems like a weird time for Sándor to be throwing out new theories (which he apparently also did in “first service”, meaning it was planned).
Paull’s theory adds fear to the discussion, that somehow our sin will prevent our guardian angel (if we have one) from protecting us.
There’s all manner of things implicated in this discussion: How many angels are there? Are new angels still being made? Are they immortal? If there are over 10x as many people today as in Jesus’ day. And there’s 2 Billion people who identify as Christians today, vs. less than 5 million Jews in the days of Jesus. Do the angels have a hard time keeping up with everyone? How fast do they travel? Do you get one when you’re not Christian? How often do Christians interact with angels?
In all of the books in the New Testament that aren’t the Gospels, Acts, or Revelation (so all the letters that are instructional), the only reference to potential interaction with angels is the following:
Colossians 2:18 — Let no one disqualify you, insisting on asceticism and worship of angels, going on in detail about visions, puffed up without reason by his sensuous mind,
Hebrews 13:2 — “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.” (which implies that the person won’t even know they are interacting with an angel).
That’s it. Nagata is spending a bunch of time on things that need not be focused on, and adding to the Bible.
An Angel to Protect San Luis Obispo
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You know, if you think about it like that, if If angels were meant to play like this zone defense, I hope for us here in San Luis Obispo, there is an angel keeping watch over us to try and protect Vista Church from the hordes of demonic activity that could be happening in our city, preventing our prayers from being answered, preventing. Yeah, God sending people sending angels to do his bidding for us.
Listen to the audio - listen to Nagata’s tone - he’s not guessing here. He’s describing what he thinks is reality. Again - Nagata never should have been asked to teach this. But there’s multiple huge problems with this.
He only wants the angel to protect Vista Church, not all Christians in the city?
Hoping for one angel, vs. “hordes of demonic activity that could be happening in our city.”
Who says there’s hordes of demonic activity?
Why is one angel all we’d expect?
And he implies that demons can:
Prevent our prayers from being answered
Prevent God from sending angels
All of this would be frightening if true. But there’s no biblical support for literally any of it. The stated effect of demons in the third item is particularly off the map and potentially damaging - no demon can prevent your prayers from being answered, and there’s nowhere in the New Testament (when believers have the Holy Spirit) that makes us think this is possible.
I really don’t know what to say other than Nagata is just making stuff up here, and spreading really damaging messages.
Angel Worship
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(@37:54) So after seeing this description of angels, there's no surprise why people in the Bible, like their first response is trying to worship them. Right. But we should never, ever, ever worship an angel. We see this amazing account in Revelation 22, verses eight through nine to help affirm that. This angel, he shows himself to John, at the very end of the Bible, if you haven't read through Revelation encourage you to read through that. John is an amazing illustrator, writing down everything that he sees. It's a glimpse of what heaven is going to look like in the end times. And he talks about everything in the book of Revelation that he's describing. So he says, here's an excerpt of Revelation, "I fell down to worship at the feet of an angel. But he said to me, 'You must not do that. I'm a fellow servant with you, and your brothers, the prophets, and with those who keep the words of this book,'" Worship God, plain and simple. And you read that. Isn't that interesting? That one, he's telling the person that's telling John, who's trying to bow down and worship this angel? No, no, do not worship me. That's the last thing you should do right now. But instead, he the angel himself says, I'm a fellow servant with you, and your brothers, the prophets. And with those that keep the words of this book, that's us guys. He's a servant alongside of us to worship God. He's always pointing back to the worship of God. And it's important that I'm trying to hammer home that we should not worship angels. We should not idolize them. Because once again, that's what Satan wanted. He wanted worship. He wanted the attention to be on him. It's the same reason why we don't worship money. We don't worship power. We don't worship, fame or our bodies, but only God Himself. God alone is worthy of that worship.
It's tempting, I don't know if any of you guys have just wondered, oh, I should check out the Christian aisle at Barnes and Nobles, or let me just look on Amazon and find a good Christian book to read that's not the Bible. There are going to be so much things that are going to be deceivingly look like Christian books, but are so unbiblical and unhealthy. I know I've seen books in aisles that talk about, well, if you want to contact your own personal angel, here are the steps to do that. Like that stuff is so demonic, and if you if you get caught up in that, it would not be beneficial for you. So I want to encourage you guys be careful what Christian books you're being influenced by. Because not all of them, unfortunately, hold to the Bible as true. So I'm going to continue on, and just wrapping up kind of this section, we should thank God that, if an angel ever does appear to any of you guys, we should be thankful that God is attentive to us in that specific kind of way to have an angel do his bidding, and deliver a message to us in that way to encourage us to worship God even more so, but we should not worship them.
(Emphasis mine)
Nagata then spends three+ minutes talking about how we should not worship angels (I agree!), including talking about how there are books that will teach you how to communicate with your guardian angel, and that they are demonic.
Here’s my only real point: Every angel in the Bible seems to deal with fear or worship when they encounter people, and they deal with it quickly and easily. No human gets it right. It seems like a quick warning would be enough here, “If you ever meet an angel, which is unlikely, don’t fear or worship them, but if you do, don’t worry about it, they’ll probably correct you.”
On the subject of books, it’s worth pointing to The Series: “Freedom” on this (emphasis mine):
Reading books by Christian authors is very helpful in your maturing as a Christian and discovering spiritual freedom. Reading allows you to gain insight from authors who are experts on these issues. While reading good books, God often reveals truth about situations where you may be stuck or hurt. We would suggest reading by recommendation only because there are a lot of books out there that are not helpful.
The message is consistent: only read what we say is ok.
Topic #3: Demons
Generally speaking, Landon’s definition of demons matches with Grudem’s:
Fallen angels
Satan is their leader.
Satan is not equal to God in any way
Still under God’s control
Desiring to be worshipped like God.
No issues there. Where we get into some problems is when Nagata starts applying it and getting into specifics about the goals and practices of demons.
Hints of Christian Nationalism and Biblicism
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(@ 52:13) For the evil one, they would seek out and tried to destroy the church and our beliefs, the ultimate goal you could say, is to have Christians not believe that the Bible is the Word of God, that they would believe that the Bible is not true. That's like one of the biggest things that the evil one is at work in, he's trying to tell us to give up this book. And to think it's just opinion or just a nice history book. That's one of the biggest attacks, I believe that's today on America, that Christianity is trying to give up or lessen the weight of what the Bible is actually trying to say to us.
This isn’t super common in Network teachings, but Nagata here talks about this being an attack “on America”. There’s a shade of Christian Nationalism there, the belief that America is a “Christian Nation”, or worse, conflating Christianity with America. The grammar of the part after that is hard to parse, so I won’t belabor this point, but I thought it was worth pointing out that Nagata seemingly slips into some sort of concern about an attack on “America.”
If you’re conservative-leaning, I don’t mean to offend here - and you may believe that America has been blessed by God in certain ways, and that’s fine. But to just kind of throw in something that almost sounds like Christianity and America are the same thing is not great.
And Nagata also says that the evil one’s “ultimate goal” is to “is to have Christians not believe that the Bible is the Word of God, that they would believe that the Bible is not true. “ The Bible is not the goal of a Christian, God is (all three members of the Trinity). And in fact, if you ascribe to election (in an upcoming MBT), the idea of “Christians believing that the Bible is not true” is not actually possible (I suppose depending on how far you take it - perhaps he’s talking about secondary or tertiary issues instead of the core gospel, but he doesn’t make that clear). Either way, the idea that the Bible is the ultimate goal instead of God being the ultimate goal has been referred to as “Biblicism”, in which the central object of our faith is the Bible, not God. Nagata likely simply stumbles into this, but again, the confidence in his voice is concerning.
Satan the Accuser
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(@53:09) Another thing that the evil one does, to oppose God is to accuse you and I. Is that familiar? For a lot of us we can feel accused by the evil one. One that I've, I hear so constantly, when I'm meeting with people from time to time, old sins that people struggle with before, they'll get accused for them today, like things that let me rephrase that. Old sins that we've received freedom from, we can get harassed, and that evil will accuse us of falling subject to them.
We can see in Revelations chapter 12, verse 10, "and I heard a loud voice in heaven saying, now the salvation and the power of the kingdom of our God, and the authority of his Christ have come for the accuser of our brothers has been thrown down, who accuses them day and night before God." I hear a lot of people that struggle with anxiety, constantly barrage with accusation after accusation. People that are new in their faith, feeling accused time in and time again. Of, "You're not good enough. Why aren't you a better Christian? Why didn't you do this? Once you do that? Oh, you messed up, you should have done this better." Accusation of accusation again and again. That's what the evil one does. For me, personally, I struggled with drinking a long time ago before I came to Jesus party scene was where I was at a long time ago, just constantly getting drunk, to be honest. And when Jesus saved me a lot of that changed in my life where I was not getting drunk anymore, or I was not partaking a lot of those things. But you know, oddly enough, today, I'll still have dreams where the evil one will harass me and give me dreams of me being drunk again. And I'll wake up in a constant sweat thinking, "no, no, did I get drunk?" Like, I don't want that anymore. And it's not something I want. Dream after dream, the evil one can oppress us like that. Once again, serpent is crafty in the way that he tries to harass us. We can feel this heavy weight of feeling bad. Questioning does God loves me? Being accused guys. But the Bible tells us that we're completely forgiven.
There’s a second clip that’s related to this, so I’ll just go ahead and drop it in here before addressing both.
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James four, seven tells us, "resist the devil and he will flee from you." I love that verse. Simple truth we can remember and use in our everyday lives. "Resist the devil and he will flee from you." That's when you guys hear suggestions that you know is not healthy or right for you. They're gonna come like a quick little whisper in your in your head, and you're discerning, "Is that Biblical? Is that what Jesus wants me to do?" And if the answer is no, then resist that unclean thought and say, "You're not going to have any power here. Get out, get out of here. I don't want that." Reject it, resist it. "Get away from me." Refuse it.
There’s a lot going on in these two clips, but I want to focus on two things.
Satan and Demons Placing Thoughts in Your Head
First, Nagata believes that Satan or Demons (almost certainly not Satan, given that Satan is not omnipresent and likely has “bigger fish to fry” than us) can place thoughts into our head. Grudem writes (italics his):
Moreover, the power of demons is limited. After rebelling against God they do not have the power they had when they were angels, for sin is a weakening and destructive influence. The power of demons, though significant, is therefore probably less than the power of angels.
In the area of knowledge, we should not think that demons can know the future or that they can read our minds or know our thoughts. (Systematic Theology, 2nd Edition, page 537; 1st Edition, page 415 - text is the same in both)
Grudem goes on to say that demons could amplify emotions such as anger in us, though stops short of the kind of “accusation” or “whisper” that Nagata talks about. It would seem very strange to me if he believed that a demon couldn’t read your thoughts but could place thoughts in your head.
I also appreciate that Grudem specifically notes that the primary point throughout the New Testament is to be on guard against our own propensity to sin, not to jump to a conclusion that it’s a demon at every hint of temptation. I knew at least a couple people who struggled with sin in the Network and Luke Williams seemed content to jump to the conclusion that it might be caused by a demon.
What follows is my opinion and thoughts on the matter - I encourage additional study. There’s little in the Bible on these concepts, so it’s been a more difficult area to get any clarity. Here’s an article by The Gospel Coalition that, for what it’s worth, somewhat disagrees with what I’m about to say, and is written by people with far more credentials.
The only passage I’m aware of that implies that a demon can do anything in the realm of direct influence/control of our actions, thoughts, or emotions, of a Christian, is in Luke 13, starting in verse 10 (emphasis mine):
Now he was teaching in one of the synagogues on the Sabbath. And behold, there was a woman who had had a disabling spirit for eighteen years. She was bent over and could not fully straighten herself. When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said to her, “Woman, you are freed from your disability.” And he laid his hands on her, and immediately she was made straight, and she glorified God. But the ruler of the synagogue, indignant because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath, said to the people, “There are six days in which work ought to be done. Come on those days and be healed, and not on the Sabbath day.” Then the Lord answered him, “You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the Sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger and lead it away to water it? And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen years, be loosed from this bond on the Sabbath day?”
That’s it - those four words right there are the grounds for the idea that a demon can afflict the body, mind, or emotions of the Christian. A few problems:
It’s possible (though unknown) that the woman, though she was a Jew (daughter of Abraham) was not a believer in any real way. In fact, John the Baptist casts doubt on the sincerity of people who say “we have Abraham as our father” (Matthew 3:9; Luke 3:8). The woman “glorified God” after the “she was made straight.”
Even if she was a believer, we only see bodily affliction - a physical disability, not mind control.
The Jews did not have the Holy Spirit dwelling inside them yet - that would not come until Pentecost. Jesus may address this himself in Matthew 12:43-45, a passage which I’ve heard Luke Williams use to justify not casting out a demon of someone who is not ready to be saved: “When the unclean spirit has gone out of a person, it passes through waterless places seeking rest, but finds none. Then it says, ‘I will return to my house from which I came.’ And when it comes, it finds the house empty, swept, and put in order. Then it goes and brings with it seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they enter and dwell there, and the last state of that person is worse than the first. So also will it be with this evil generation.”
There’s nothing about this in the epistles. There’s things like “give the devil no opportunity”, but that could just as easily mean “don’t play into the enemies hands by doing the things he’d want you to do anyways” or “don’t deliver yourself into temptation”
I think it’s true that the Bible shows Satan and Demons working in the world, and can affect us indirectly through external forces: other people that they have afflicted, circumstances, media, etc. That all seems reasonable to me. But the idea that a demon can directly influence the thoughts of a Christian by placing a thought in your head that sounds like your own is foreign to the Bible (even in the case of the daughter of Abraham, we only see bodily affliction).
The same goes for dreams, though I suppose it’s a bit more possible that a demon could manifest in your room and audibly speak things that would influence your dreams, in the same way that if you fall asleep in front of a TV show, you may dream about what’s happening in that show as your brain incorporates the sounds into your dreams. I find this to still be not terribly plausible, mostly because we do not see this in the Bible, ever. If it was that easy for demons to do this, I’d expect at least one warning about it in one of Paul, Peter, or John’s letters, but we see none. Again, the doctrine of the sufficiency of scripture allows us to rule out things which do not appear in the Bible.
In fact, it’s interesting that the two most famous examples of Satan himself tempting someone (Adam and Eve, Jesus) are both:
Actually Satan doing the tempting, not some other demon (in the Bible, I’m unaware of a case where another demon does the tempting)
Satan converses directly with the person. No tricks, no mind control, he just shows up and speaks lies.
Even though the devil is “like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour”, we see no face-to-face encounters between any of the apostles and Satan in the book of Acts or beyond.
Nagata's Nightmares about Alcohol
Nagata was removed as a pastor less than a year after teaching this, for consuming alcohol. As near as I can tell, at least one instance of him drinking more than was allowable had already occurred by the time he was teaching this (and possibly both instances). If so, knowing that it could cost him his job would make sense in terms of him being stressed enough to have dreams or nightmares about it, and Nagata would have known that as he was speaking. When he told me what he was removed for, he did say that he had not “gotten drunk”, just “buzzed”, but he sounded like Luke Williams had seen it differently. I suspect that Nagata knew what he had done, and was worried that it had crossed a line but wasn’t sure, and was super stressed about it.
Why does this matter? Because Nagata is using his nightmares here as personal evidence that Satan is accusing him of sin that he’s gotten freedom from. If my understanding is correct, he’s not just lying, he’s using that falsehood as evidence for doctrine. To which, again, I say: Sufficiency of Scripture. This is a core flaw in The Network’s theology. They continually bias toward personal experience as being valid as an extension of the Bible. They may be right about this, they may be wrong, but the danger of using a false personal anecdote to justify a doctrine should be obvious to all. It’s similar to Luke Williams using the false account of Josephus to show that the Gospel is true. And if telling that falsehood was the reason he was removed as a pastor, then it’s all the more egregious that the church never announced why he was removed. Again, all of this is null and void if Nagata was lying to me when he told me what happened with him no longer being a pastor.
I know some of you reading this have likely had a personal experience where you believe you have experienced deliverance or some other interaction with demons. That is certainly possible, but just be discerning about it.
Explaining clear things
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I know the demon was trying to like, make small talk of "I know who you are Jesus," but Jesus had no patience with them. He rebuked him said "Be silent, Come out of him." It's kind of quick "Shut up, I'm not going to listen to you anymore and get out.”
Compare:
Jesus: “Be silent, Come out of him.”
Nagata: “Shut up, I’m not going to listen to you anymore and get out.”
Nagata’s explanation here, I hope you’ll agree, is fully unnecessary. Jesus’ language is quite clear to begin with, and is short and to the point, and effective. Nagata more than doubles the number of words used, and adds a whole phrase that Jesus didn’t use at all (“I’m not going to listen to you anymore”).
I believe this comes from Network pastors need to “go down through the text” and almost reflexively explain things that do not need explained. Let’s look at a bigger example of this.
The Sermon on the Mount
Somewhere around maybe 2018, Luke Williams taught a series on The Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7), which some have called “the greatest sermon ever delivered.” Williams wasn’t feeling well on the first Sunday, and so I half-jokingly recommended: “So just have someone read The Sermon on the Mount and be done with it.” Williams laughed, and then actually joked about it in the sermon.
I still look back and I wonder: why don’t we do that? Why do we believe that every single word has to be explained, taking 10 verses and turning them into a 45-minute sermon? This has the effect of at least eroding confidence in another scriptural doctrine: The Clarity of Scripture (sometimes unhelpfully called the “perspicuity of scripture” which means the same thing but uses a word no one knows). This doctrine says that the average person can generally understand the main points of the Bible. Imagine the scene of the Sermon on the Mount. Thousands gathered, listening to Jesus. Jesus starts teaching, and in some way, everyone can hear him. His words are important enough that Matthew spends over 10% of his gospel writing them down, and much of it ends up in other Gospels as well. But if you read the Sermon on the Mount aloud, it takes less than 15 minutes. I just tried it, and actually found it fascinating - the pure, concentrated form of it is so powerful. I encourage you to try it, or listen - I’ve tried it here.
I recorded it in 10 clips so please don’t judge the speaking quality relative to a Network pastor who is speaking live. Speaking live is hard, and even though I was literally reading, and I gave myself a couple do-overs, I still misspoke at a number of points. I don’t hold it against the pastors that they misspeak - that’s just how live speaking works. You may also notice a couple of overly annunciated words (ending ‘t’ sounds particularly), which are not my normal speech style - I don’t know whether this is The Network’s influence, culture’s influence, or just me doing it. I tried to not do that, but still did at times. I’ve not tried to do any EQ work here but did clean up a bit of noise, so this is (mostly) just what the mic picked up.
If you tried it, or listened, I hope you’ll agree: this is powerful stuff. Jesus knows what he’s doing. He makes some points quickly and moves on. Others, he expounds upon.
Expository preaching (the style generally attempted by The Network) is supposed to have two goals:
Add context or make connections to other parts of the Bible that those listening might not make on their own.
Discussion of how to apply the text to our lives.
But Network teachers will frequently
Go off onto anecdotes or tangents that are simply not related to the text at all, making points that are unsupported by it.
Explain the text in ways that are obvious to the reader
Or much worse, explain the text in ways are not actually in it
We see Nagata doing the second item here - explaining what’s happening in a way that the Holy Spirit did not see a need to when inspiring the Bible, and then also adding a phrase (“I’m not going to listen to you anymore”) that wasn’t present in the text.
This is a bad practice, and you may also see it in Small Group as leaders take licenses with the text right in front of you.
Why does it matter?
When interaction with the Bible is done through this style of teaching, it can have the effect of telling the individual that they couldn’t understand it on their own. It also gives a lot of opportunity for the teacher to insert their own views, using the rhetorical tricks I’ve been discussing. It’s dangerous, and will make it sound like you’re getting “good teaching” when you are not. After all, they’re just “going down through the text”. How could they be “wrong”?
Remaining Points on Demons
Ok, so that’s enough on this - there’s a couple more small things, but this post is already far too long, and I’ve still got probably the meatiest piece of it to go.
What's Next?
Thanks to anyone who made it this far! As always, feedback is welcome at not.overcome@outlook.com and you can join the discussion over on the r/leavingthenetwork subreddit. We’re now over an hour into the session (1:06:58, to be precise), with one big topic to go.
Part 3: Homosexuality and Same-sex Marriage