Deuteronomy 32:8–9 informs Bible readers that God put the nations under the authority of the sons of God when he judged them at the Tower of Babel. Deuteronomy 4:19–20, a parallel to the two verses in Deuteronomy 32, reveals the flip side of that judgment-coin—the gods of the nations were allotted to the people God had disinherited. The result was that God took Israel as his own people (Deut. 32:9), but everyone else was under the dominion of lesser gods. These gods would in time become hostile to God and corrupt the nations (Ps. 82). In effect, non-Israelites were enslaved to demonic entities (Deut. 32:17).
The reversal of this situation came with the arrival of Jesus, his work on the cross, and the coming of the Spirit at Pentecost. In the wake of Jesus’s resurrection, the birth of the church signified an aggressive advance in the spiritual battle for the kingdom of God, which launched in the public ministry of Jesus, its king.
The epistles presume this spiritual warfare. The nations are under dominion and their people must be liberated by the gospel and brought into God’s kingdom. It’s easy to tell because of the terms Paul uses to describe the hostile entities that enslaved people. Paul uses the term “demons” only six times, four of which occur in 1 Corinthians 10:20–21, and that passage draws on Deuteronomy 32:17, where the gods of the nations at Babel are called demons (cf. Deut. 4:19–20; 17:3–4; 29:24–26; 32:17).
Paul refers to these demons by a range of other terms: rulers (1 Cor. 2:6; Eph. 3:10; 6:12; Col. 1:16), authorities (Eph. 3:10; 6:12; Col. 1:16); thrones (Col. 1:16); dominions (Col. 1:16). All these words have a common denominator: they describe geographical rulership. They are all used elsewhere in the New Testament to signify human beings ruling over specific places. Paul’s language is quite consistent with the notion that the earth’s nations are under the dominion of sinister divine beings who are hostile to Jesus and the gospel.
The lesson is simple but profound. This world is not our home. It is enslaved by demonic powers who resist surrendering their subjects to the Most High. This was the world of the apostles; it is our world as well. The battle will continue until the “fullness of the gentiles” (Rom. 11:25) is brought into the kingdom, wrenched free from the powers of darkness.