Our Spiritual Warfare - Part 3

But really, who are these principalities? It's plural, principalities and powers we're battling. And we need to know who they are or we may not understand who we're dealing with.
So to answer this question, one of the things to understand is what the culture was back in Jesus' day, back in the Apostle Paul's day. What did they know? What did they understand? And the religious Jews of Paul's day believed that the whole condition of the world is based upon (or the result of) three supernatural rebellions.
It's just the fall, not just Eve picking the apple. That's not the cause of every bad thing that's happening today, but three rebellions are the cause of it. And that documentation was found both in Scripture and in the writings that have been discovered in the Middle East in the 1900s. One of which is the Dead Sea Scrolls. It's amazing what they found there. But that tells you what's in the mind of these people back then (200 BC to 100 AD).
So, what are these three rebellions that I'm referring to?
Well, we know of the first one. I referred to it in Genesis 3. The serpent. The God of this world. Ephesians 2:2 says, "Wherein in times past you walked according to this world, according to the prince [principality] of the power [authority] of the air." He's running the world system, the unsaved world, the world of darkness. He's one of those world rulers. He's the spirit that's working in the children of disobedience (the unsaved). Well, we knew that from the other verse. They're in darkness. They're under their authority.
Now, notice what Matthew 4 says. Matthew 4:8-9. This was during the temptation in the desert when Jesus was going 40 days without food and drink. It says, "The devil taketh him up to a high exceeding mountain and showeth him all the kingdoms of the world." How can he do that? I don't know. But it says he did and the glory of them. And he said, "All these will I give thee, if thou will fall down and worship me.
Now Jesus doesn't reply and say, "Who do you think you are? You can't offer those kingdoms to me. You don't have authority." No, Jesus doesn't say that. He doesn't question the devil's authority to offer him these kingdoms. He just says, "Don't tempt the Lord your God." [Note: Luke 4:5–7 says And the devil said unto him, All this power [authority] will I give thee, and the glory of them: for that is delivered unto me; and to whomsoever I will I give it. If thou therefore wilt worship me, all shall be thine.”]
And these kingdoms are obviously the Gentile kingdoms because Yahweh rules over Israel. So I don't think the devil was offering him Israel. I think he was offering him the rest of the world.
So that's the first rebellion, but it's only one being, as far as I can tell from Scripture. So this is not the principalities and powers refered to in Eph. 6:12. So we must search for another rebellion.