Doctrines of Demons from Angels of Light – dangerous end time teachings that threaten your soul
By R T Kendall
Destiny Image Publishers, 210 pp
Review by Chris Simmons, pastor of Vita Church, Hove
RT begins his book with wisdom gleaned over a lifetime of pastoral ministry. He views the results of those who believe the Bible and obey it – and those who don’t.
The result is a much needed volume; so many doctrines are being passed off in churches, often under the radar, that bear no resemblance to biblical truth apart from Paul’s warning to Timothy: “The Spirit clearly says that in later times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons” (1 Timothy 4:1).
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As RT surveys apostasy (a moving away from the Bible’s revealed truth) in the UK and the worldwide Church, he suggests that new Christians should believe the Bible from beginning to end and live a life of total forgiveness. These two pieces of wisdom are the basis for his book.
“For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear” (2 Timothy 4:3).
RT is aiming to counteract the severe lack of orthodoxy in so many charismatic evangelical churches. Many of these churches would rather not teach sound doctrine at all, probably because their congregations won’t put up with it!
There is no such failure in this book, and it highlights some of the dangers of not believing the Bible. He makes it abundantly clear that if you don’t believe the Bible, you will be deceived.
Not willing to leave his readers guessing what these demonic doctrines are, RT labels them, and, without naming names, indicates those who are promulgating them (although you might be able to guess!). RT doesn’t believe in a reinvention of orthodoxy (neo-orthodoxy for example), nor in a broad Church (it’s a narrow road that leads to life) but rather labels such heresies as coming from the enemy of God who masquerades as an angel of light.
Chapter by chapter, he examines in detail the doctrines of demons that have embedded themselves into parts of the Church, which has absorbed them as if they were in the Bible or because the Church has believed them down many centuries, which it hasn’t! Doctrines like a feel-good prosperity type Gospel, universalism, open theism, ‘hyper grace’ and others all come from not believing what the Bible actually teaches.
RT relates how, over lunch, a well-known Anglican friend told him he was going to upset his evangelical friends with a belief in annihilationism, (the belief that the wicked will ultimately cease to exist rather than suffer eternally in hell), not because he found it in the Bible, but because he couldn’t emotionally face the thought that the lost face an eternity in conscious suffering torment. But for RT it’s a question of what God says in his Word; he believes it and so should you.
There is a wonderful chapter on the importance of character, and that a person’s giftedness says more about God, than it does about the person using his gifts. As someone well used to the supernatural ministry of the Spirit, his call to examine character and holiness is timely. Again, RT gives several personal, all too human anecdotes.
Here is a book that is both easy to read, with plenty of human stories and take-aways, and also theologically dense; it contains lots of Scripture to validate his points.
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