The War Unseen: The Long Battle Against Christ and His Church
Part 1 - When the Light Entered the War, in a 5 part series on spiritual warfare.
Author's Note: What follows is a personal hypothesis. While I am a devoted member of the Orthodox Church, this work does not reflect the official position of the Orthodox Church nor does it speak on behalf of it.
Rather, it represents my own synthesis and reflection on the long historical arc of spiritual warfare I believe has been waged against God, Christ, and His Church from the moment of the Incarnation until now. Ideas and concepts articulated within this article come from my own understanding of early church and reformation history, orthodox and roman catholic podcasts and some evangelical sources. (Where these types of views tend to be the most prevalent.)
When the Light Entered the War
Picture Judea at night—a quiet river. A carpenter’s son steps down into the Jordan—and the unseen world panics.
From that moment on, the Gospels have elements that read like a war report. Demons shrieking in public. Tyrants seethe. Quiet villages become battlefields. Christ doesn’t just teach; He binds, casts out, spoils, and harrows. He moves with the calm authority of a rightful King reclaiming stolen ground.
This is the core claim of my whole series: the Incarnation didn’t merely deliver fresh information about God. It detonated a regime.
“Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be cast out” (Jn 12:31).
What begins in Bethlehem and Jordan is a revolutionary insurgency that continues, sacramentally and concretely, in the life of the Church and every Christian. Since that time, the devil and his demons have been fighting relentlessly to recover what they lost and to cement their hold on humanity.
In this initial article, we lay the foundations, illuminating why Christians from the beginning understood life in Christ as entry into a real, ongoing war. In future articles, we trace how the demonic counterattack unfolds across history.
TLDR;
Scripture names the Devil —“the ruler of this world.” His kingdom is then exposed and broken by Christ.
Christ binds the strong man (Satan), harrows Hades, and inaugurates a Church that extends His victory sacramentally.
Orthodox baptism preserves this worldview: exorcism, renunciation, and a new allegiance.
Christianity is not a hobby or just another religion; it’s a revolution under a new King.
A World Already Owned
When Christ was born in Bethlehem, He entered a world that had already been conquered.
I’m not waxing poetic or attempting to be hyperbolic. Both scripture and the fathers are clear: the devil was, until that point, the ruler of the Earth. He didn’t create it, he didn’t have divine authority over it, but he did maintain a sort of illegitimate dominion, or spiritual tyranny over the earth.
Christ knows this and tells us:
The Apostle Paul calls Satan “the god of this age” (2 Cor 4:4), and “the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience” (Eph 2:2). In the desert, Satan dares to offer Christ the kingdoms of the world—“for they have been given to me, and I give them to whomever I wish” (Lk 4:6). Christ doesn’t correct him.
“The ruler of this world is coming, and he has nothing in Me” (John 14:30). The devil “has nothing in Me,” Christ says, because there is no compromise between God and darkness.
The message is clear. Before Christ came, the nations were under occupation. The devil and his demons had made the world their kingdom. They ruled through lies, idolatry, vice, fear, and death. Every city-state with its false pagan gods, every empire soaked in blood and oppression, and every human soul driven by shame, confusion, and the passions. This was his realm.
The Orthodox Study Bible’s footnote on John 14:30 confirms this:
“The ruler of this world is the devil, who dominates the realm of those who do not love Christ or keep His commandments.”
The Incarnation Was an Invasion
The birth of Jesus Christ wasn’t just a moment in our individual salvation. It was a beachhead. A counter-invasion. A divine act of war.
Open the Gospels and notice when the demonic becomes loud: when Jesus shows up. The Nativity already hints at it (Herod’s slaughter of the innocents). At the Baptism, the Spirit descends, the Father speaks, and Christ immediately enters the wilderness to confront the tempter (Mt 4; Lk 4). From there, every town He visits is punctuated by exorcisms. The demons recognize Him before the crowds do: “I know who You are—the Holy One of God!” (Mk 1:24).
Father Josiah Trenham puts it plainly in his lecture series on demonology:
As soon as Jesus is baptized, he goes immediately into the desert and there he's confronted by Satan himself, who comes to tempt him. This is found in the fourth chapter of St. Matthew's Gospel. Note that immediately after the temptations, as soon as the Evil One was put to shame, when he confronted Christ, even after our Savior had fasted from all food and drink for 40 days, […] he had strengthened himself by prayer so much and by fasting so much that when Satan approached him and tempted him so viciously, Christ defeated the Devil. He rebutted all of Satan's misuse of Holy Scripture1.
Satan tempted (or attempted to tempt) Christ by twisting Scripture.
This is a crucial point to remember as we progress through following articles, that the Devil, from the beginning, attempts to manipulate and corrupt by twisting Scripture.
From then on, Christ’s public ministry is punctuated constantly by the demonic. The demons scream when He enters a town—because they know the Kingdom of God has come and their kingdom is being dismantled.”
In iconography, this confrontation is symbolized from the beginning of the Christian story. In the icon of the Nativity, you’ll see the devil depicted as an old, bent man whispering into Joseph’s ear, sowing doubt. You’ll see Herod’s slaughter of the infants—a demonic reaction to the Incarnation. In Christ’s baptism, Satan comes in person to tempt Him. And in exorcism after exorcism, the powers of darkness scream in terror and flee.
Because they sense what’s coming.
[…] When the kingdom of God comes to us, when we're entering into the kingdom through holy baptism, the same thing happens. The destruction of the demonic in our life, the removing of the demonic presence through exorcism and through baptism in our life, and the enthronement of a new king, a new ruler, Christ himself.
As an aside for non-Orthodox, the first part of the Orthodox baptismal service essentially consists of an exorcism for the person who is about to be baptized. What follows is then a rejection of the devil and the demonic. Baptism casts out the Devil and the influence of the demonic so that you can be made a new creation in Christ, who thereafter will rule and reign in your heart. This is one of the reasons why in the orthodox church, we baptize infants - as has always been done in the Lord’s church, from day one. This idea of an “age of accountability” - called the “believer’s baptism” is a product of the Reformation and the Anabaptist movement. (i.e. it’s a doctrine of men, not apostles, not prophets, not saints, men who in their arrogance believed they knew better than the truth handed down from the apostles.)
I recall hearing a sermon - I can’t remember where - maybe Fr. Trenham, which went something like this:
“Before your baptism evil works from the inside out and Grace from the outside in. After your baptism Grace works from the inside out and evil works from the outside in.”
Binding the Strong Man
One of the most important clues Christ gives us that this war has commenced is this:
“No one can enter a strong man’s house and plunder his goods unless he first binds the strong man. Then indeed he may plunder his house.” (Mark 3:27)
The “strong man” is Satan. His “house” is the fallen world. His “goods” are us—those who bear the image of God but have been enslaved by the devil through sin and death.
The Church Fathers saw this clearly. Christ’s Incarnation, death, and resurrection are the concrete acts by which the devil is bound, and Hell is plundered. This isn’t a metaphor. It’s the foundational understanding of how Christ inaugurates His Kingdom: by dismantling the devil’s. So, all throughout our Savior's public ministry, as the kingdom of God advances, Satan and the demons run in terror.
“When the Kingdom of God comes, the Kingdom of Satan must fall. You can’t have both. Christ came to bind the devil so that people could be liberated, so the Gospel could go forth, so the nations could be discipled.”
Demonology E1 - Fr. Josiah Trenham
The Cross Was a Trap
We often forget how negatively the Cross was perceived at the time of the crucifixion. In those days, to die on the cross was considered the ultimate humiliation—the ultimate defeat and denigration. People of ill repute, the weak and sometimes the defenseless were crucified. If Jesus had merely been just another man, or another false messiah2, we would never have heard of Him, his Gospel or His Church. After all, who knows or remembers the names of any of the other false/pretend messiahs that arose during the Second Temple period? Not me, probably not you. Maybe some crusty old academic somewhere.
To many people at that time the crucifixion was seen as the brutal end of a misguided rabbi. To the devil, it looked like a final victory over the messiah. The orthodox hymnography of Holy Friday imagines Satan rejoicing, thinking he has captured the Messiah.
But it was all a trap.
In the hymnody of Holy Friday the devil himself is described as rejoicing. Thinking that he had in his jaws - the jaws of death - a man. Then [imagine] the chief of all evil, Satan himself, being terrorized by recognizing that - who he had in his mouth was not a man, but [instead] he found himself face to face with God. He attempted to eat Christ, and [instead] Christ ate him and all his power, including death. Think of what the Lord did on Holy Saturday when he, like lightning, shot into hell and plundered it.3
If you look at the icons of the descent into Hell, in the icon of Jesus plundering Hell, his garments are blowing in the wind, not hanging down, which the iconographer paints to convey that "Christ is descending like a bomb into hell" and "shooting like lightning down there to shock and destroy the power of death".
In one corner of some icons of the harrowing of hell (aka the descent into Hades), you can see all of the dark faces of the demons. In another corner, you see the righteous in their white garments awaiting the coming of Christ, including figures like the patriarch Abraham and St. Josiah, who had gone before us to rest but had not yet experienced the conquering of death.
[In some ancient icons,] the devils are depicted holding a piece of paper, which is the record of our sins, and Jesus is holding the other half, torn in two. This imagery is drawn from St. Paul's Second Chapter of his Epistle to the Colossians, where Christ on the cross nullifies the record of our sins, which is the devils' power over us, effectively tearing it up.
This act of plundering hell signifies that Jesus shot into hell "like lightning" and "destroyed the power of death". It also highlights how Christ nullified the record of our sins, which gave the devils power over us, as the wages of sin is death. The resurrection brought an end to the tyranny of death, which St. Paul describes as Satan's chief weapon used to control people.
Fr. Josiah Trenham - Demonology lecture series, Lecture 1. https://app.patristicnectar.org/discover/demonology-understanding-and-winning-the-spiritual-battle
St. John Chrysostom famously describes the Cross as a baited hook: Christ’s humanity concealed the divine hook that would tear open Hades and set the captives free. St. Gregory of Nyssa describes the devil as a dragon who swallowed Christ and was destroyed from within.
And St. Paul says this directly:
“He disarmed the rulers and authorities and made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the Cross.” (Col 2:15)
The Cross looked like the final victory of darkness. In reality it was the trapdoor under death’s feet. The Fathers return to this theme again and again: Death swallowed what it thought was a man and met God. The “record of debts” that accused us was nailed to the Cross and torn up (Col 2:14–15). Christ “through death destroys the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and delivers all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery.” (Heb 2:14–15)
Orthodox iconography preserves the Church’s memory of this moment in the Harrowing of Hades: Christ shattering the gates, pulling Adam and Eve by the wrists from their tombs, the shackles of death flying like shrapnel. What the Cross accomplished, the Resurrection reveals.
The Resurrection Shatters the Gates
Orthodox iconography of the Descent into Hades (often shown on Pascha) vividly portrays the following themes:
Christ stands above the broken gates of hell, often shaped like a cross.
He pulls Adam and Eve out of their graves by the wrists.
Chains, locks, and broken keys litter the floor.
The demons are scattered in terror.
Christ’s garments blow upward—He is descending like lightning, not floating gently.
In the corner, you’ll sometimes see a demon holding a scroll—the record of our sins. In such icons, Christ is holding the other half, torn. In the icon below, Christ has recovered the scroll and taken ownership of it.
This is the fulfillment of Colossians 2:14:
“He canceled the record of debt that stood against us… this He set aside, nailing it to the Cross.”
The Resurrection is not just victory over death—it’s the spoiling of hell. It’s the declaration that the tyrant has been deposed. But the war isn’t over.
Pentecost and the Liberation of the Nations
If Pascha (the Greek form of the word Passover - when the crucifixion and resurrection occur) is the thunderclap, Pentecost is the rolling thunder. The Spirit descends; the apostles preach; the nations begin to be discipled. The same Kingdom that broke the devil’s power in Christ’s earthly ministry now extends through word, sacrament, and saintly life.
From the beginning, the Church behaved like people who believed they were healing fallen sinners and liberating prisoners, not merely adopting lost sheep interested in finding life’s meaning in the wastelands of secular materialist culture.
Catechumens were exorcised and taught; the baptized renounced Satan explicitly; the Eucharist was approached as participation in Christ’s life, the consumption of which infuses the Grace of Christ into our very cells, healing us, rejuvenating us, and bringing us closer to Him.
None of this makes sense if you imagine the world as a secular space serving as a neutral marketplace of ideas. It makes perfect sense if you believe what Scripture says:
“We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers… the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.” (Eph 6:12)
At Pentecost, Christ continues his mission to reclaim the world from Satan. He establishes the Church and tasks it with spreading the Gospel, a Gospel which has the ability to plunder the Devil’s world and reclaim it for the light.
“He will no longer be able to deceive the nations,” says Revelation 20, describing the binding of Satan.
The Church understood this to mean that now the Gospel could go forth. Now the strong man is bound, and the apostles can pillage his house.
This worldview is why the early baptismal rites include renunciations of Satan and exorcisms. To become a Christian is to defect from the tyrant and to swear loyalty to Christ the King.
Understanding Orthodox Baptism in Light of Spiritual Warfare
If you’ve never experienced an Orthodox baptism from the beginning, the first half might come as a surprise. Before there are any sermons, talks, dunking, or pouring, there are exorcisms and renunciations.
The catechumen (or the sponsor acting in proxy for an infant) literally faces west—the direction traditionally associated with darkness—and renounces and spits at Satan. Then he or she turns east, confesses the Nicene faith, and unites to Christ.
While you may consider this theatrical, this portion of the sacrament of baptism isn’t meant to be theatre. It comes from a tradition that inherited a specific worldview. The early Church spoke and acted this way because the apostles spoke and acted this way.
Patristic Father, St. Justin Martyr (2nd c.) calls the pagan “gods” demons and says they even imitate Christian rites to keep people ensnared. St. Irenaeus and St. Athanasius describe the exposure of idolatry and the flight of demons in the wake of Christ’s appearing. St. Cyril of Jerusalem, instructing new believers, talks plainly about the exorcisms they received as preparation for illumination. This is the early, normative Christian imagination: baptism is not just symbolic of the death and resurrection of Christ, it’s a complete switching of allegiances via a jailbreak from demonic enslavement and the enthronement of Christ in our hearts, supplanting the tyrant.
I belabor this point because it’s not just historical trivia. This perspective clarifies what kind of war we’re in. I would also argue that if you strip the Gospels of spiritual warfare, you don’t get a milder Christianity—you get a different religion.
Losing the Script on Baptism and the Sacraments
When the sacrament of baptism is treated like a quaint naming ceremony, or a ritual of mere symbolic value (and hence reserved for discerning adults or those who have reached an age of accountability), Christianity is then easily deconstructed into a set of mythological stories that support seemingly arbitrary moral values that can be mired in politics and contested by the secular world.
When we keep in mind that the sacrament of baptism is a transfer of allegiance, then the whole of Christian life falls into place, and it makes a lot more sense why the church Christ established has baptized infants from the very beginning. It’s less about the ability to be held responsible for sin and more about liberating a child from the dominion of the devil by placing his soul under the Grace and protection of Jesus Christ.
Since the mid-20th century, we have seen the rise of something called postmodernism, bringing with it a resurrected pagan idea we know today as moral relativism - where there is no objective truth, everyone has their own truth, and if this is the case, then who are Christians to impose their “truth” on everyone else?
These are the fruits of losing the script regarding the sacraments, which, sadly, is becoming ever more common. Some denominations no longer even see the need for baptism, saying they only need to say the sinner's prayer. Most Western denominations that do “altar calls” have no altars. Many (mormons included) have either abandoned or denuded the eucharist relegating it to a symbolic memorial, one that can even be celebrated with candy bars and gatorade (I have personally witnessed this as a child on an LDS youth scout camp. We didn’t have bread or fresh water on hand so we used “Mr. Big candy bars and one of the leaders bottles of gatorade.” )
The thought of this makes me very sad; I’m reminded of the parable of the fig tree. Are we, with our constant church splits, faith deconstructions, enlightenment-style rationalizations of the sacraments, and relativism, any better than the first-century Jews and Pharisees at this point?
If the world were neutral as modern secularists and postmodernists would have you believe, then none of this would make sense. (And hence why none of this makes sense to them.) But the world isn’t neutral—it was contested ground then, and it’s contested ground now.
The War is Real, but so is the Victory
I’m not writing this series because I like doomsday thinking. I’m writing it because it seems to me that we’ve forgotten what kind of world we live in. For a long time, I was swayed by the arguments that the Devil wasn’t real and that evil came solely from the heart of mankind, not some supernatural force, which seemed like a convenient scapegoat. However, I’m here to tell you that the Devil is indeed real. He works on us every day; he knows us better than we know ourselves. He wants his Kingdom back, he wants us back, and he’s playing the long game. The best tool he has at his defence is for us to believe that he doesn’t exist and to become passive.
The world is a battlefield. And if you’re baptized, you’re on the front lines whether you know it or not, whether you like it or not.
But take heart, Christ has already won the decisive battle, and Satan has been bound. Death has been shattered. The Kingdom has come. The only question is whether we will live as if that’s true.
Many readers, particularly those from LDS or protestant backgrounds, may be confused by the above statement that Satan is bound. Both faith groups inherit millennialist and dispensationalist ideas that at the second coming, Satan will be bound for 1000 years. However, the Orthodox understanding of this is somewhat different. For us, the “binding” of Satan refers to Satan’s loss of his former absolute dominion over humanity and the nations after the Incarnation, Crucifixion, and Resurrection. Being bound does not mean that Satan is powerless. He has not been annihilated and is not completely inactive. He’s “bound” in the sense that his ability to keep people from knowing God has been curtailed (cf. Matthew 12:29—Jesus binding the “strong man” before plundering his house). Evil is still at work, but the Church, through the Gospel and the sacraments, advances into territory formerly under Satan’s uncontested control.
“He will no longer be able to deceive the nations,” says Revelation 20, describing the binding of Satan.
The “thousand years” often referred to in popular Western eschatology refers not to a literal 1000 years, but to an indeterminate duration of time that we believe equals the current Church age, from the Resurrection to the Second Coming. At the end of this age, according to Revelation 20:7–10, Satan will be “loosed for a little while” to mount one last deception before the second coming and his final defeat. At the Last Judgment, Satan will be completely and permanently bound—cast into the “lake of fire” (Revelation 20:10). This is the absolute removal of his power and influence for eternity.
Personally, if I were to speculate, I would be inclined to think that we are in the period of that final loosing before the second coming.
The Logic of a War You Can’t See
If you accept the picture I’ve painted above, certain things logically follow:
There is a personal enemy. Christ calls him “the ruler of this world” (Jn 12:31; 14:30). I think it’s important to remember that while powerful, he’s not God’s equal; he’s a fallen angel, the opposite of an angel like Michael, not the Creator—but he is real and malicious.
He held the nations in darkness. That’s St. Paul’s claim (Acts 26:18), and the Fathers take it seriously. The pagan world wasn’t spiritually empty; it was spiritually occupied. Early Christians familiar with the Pagan world understood this. They also understood that to sacrifice to a pagan God was to worship it and that you became like the thing you worshipped. If theosis is the goal for Christians, then we need a very clear understanding of what the image of God looks like. If the image you are working towards is blurred, marred, distorted, or counterfeit, theosis becomes at least improbable, at worst, impossible. This explains a few things we see in early church history:
Early Christians would rather be martyred in the most horrific ways than to offer sacrifices to false pagan Gods (including the emperor.)
Early Christians reacted strongly against heresy in any shape or form. Some of us today might look at some of these early heresies and wonder what the big deal was, but early Christians understood that falling into heresy could cost you your soul.
Christ bound him. Not annihilated—bound (Mk 3:27). Revelation 20 uses the same image. Binding means the Gospel can now plunder the house—the nations can come to the light.
Counterattack is inevitable. Unable to strike Christ, the enemy targets His Body. Sometimes with swords and prisons. More often with counterfeits, fragmentation, confusion, deception, and the inflaming of the passions. Since man has already been corrupted and the seed of corruption lives within us, we are particularly susceptible to manipulation and deception at the hands of the demonic.
If we keep these points in mind, the last two millennia look less like a random churn of events and more like a pattern. That’s where we are headed in future installments of this series.
Aren’t You Over-Spiritualizing History?
That’s a fair criticism, so let me answer it head-on.
I am not arguing that every event has a one-to-one demonic operator lurking behind it like a cartoon version of the Wizard of OZ. I am saying that a Christian reading of history must include both visible and invisible causes. Scripture treats spiritual agency as real. The Fathers, who evangelized a world thick with pagan oracles and idols, treated it as real. The Church’s sacramental practice assumes it’s real.
A better way to put it: Grace and nature cooperate; sin and demons collaborate. You can describe Nero’s politics in human terms and still believe cruelty has a spiritual patron. You can analyze the Sexual Revolution with sociology and still see how it inflamed precisely those passions Scripture warns will enslave us. Refusing one layer of causation because it’s unfashionable is not “objective.” It’s just willful blindness, or worse, amnesia.
Why This Matters
If this is really the world we live in, then the “ordinary” pattern of Christian life is a relatively coherent battle plan:
Renounce, then cling. The renunciations we made (or had made for us) at baptism aren’t obsolete. We renew them every time we confess, forgive, and reject the idols on offer—money, power, lust, the endless performance of self.
Pray with your body. The Church insists that attention is trained, not wished for. Standing, prostrating, making the sign of the Cross, and keeping a prayer rule—these aren’t just for show; they’re how we learn to mean our faith.
Submit to God and reside in obedience to Him. Lone-ranger Christianity is asking to get picked off. The New Testament assumes bishops, priests, deacons, and a people gathered. Find your parish. Submit to the will of God and the guidance of a father-confessor. Show up even when you don’t want to, and be obedient.
Treat your home like a small monastery. A few icons, a candle, a mealtime prayer. Quiet hours. Fasting as a household. This is how the passions are cooled and the mind is cleared to love.
None of that is extraordinary. It’s the way Christians have always fought. Ordinary faithfulness looks unimpressive right up until you notice the broken chains and shackles lying on the floor.
The Devil Regroups
What does Satan do when he realizes he’s lost?
He regroups. He shifts tactics. He retaliates.
Lucifer knows that he cannot stop the Kingdom from coming. However, the growth of the Kingdom and the salvation of its people are dependent on, well, people. So instead, he preys on people to advance his strategies, which are aimed at limiting, retarding, or reversing the growth of God’s kingdom. That means destroying or thwarting the efforts of the church in any way possible and corrupting those who belong to it. I believe the devil’s strategies include:
Counterfeit the Gospel (false gods, false doctrines, false religions, false Christs) to lead people away from truth, even causing them to set up opposition to the truth.
Corrupt the Church and the Gospel from within (heresy, pride, false teachers)
Crush the Church from without (persecution, oppression)
Fragment the Church (schism, ego, tribalism) to dilute it and diminish its potency.
Inflame the passions - to re-enslave its people and have them do his work for him.
Confuse the mind (twisting scripture, distracting prayer),
Isolate Christians (cutting off from Church, family, authority, community).
This is the war we’re still in.
The Counterattack
If Christ’s arrival exposes the enemy and binds the strong man, what’s the enemy’s first move in the counterattack?
He doesn’t begin with overt persecution. He starts with an older, quieter tactic: counterfeiting the holy. He mimics the things of God just enough to misdirect worship and enslave the hearts of those he’s able to deceive. He is the father of Lies after all.
That’s Part II: “Counterfeits: How the ‘Gods’ Lied.” We’ll look at how the ancient world was managed by spiritual impostors—and why the same method, slicker and better funded, is alive and well today.
Selected Readings
Scripture: Mk 1–5; Mt 4; Lk 4; Jn 12:31; 14:30; Mk 3:27; 1 Jn 3:8; Col 2:14–15; Heb 2:14–15; Eph 6:10–20; Rev 20:1–3.
Fathers: St. Justin Martyr, First Apology; St. Irenaeus, Against Heresies; St. Athanasius, On the Incarnation; St. Cyril of Jerusalem, Procatechesis & Mystagogical Catecheses; St. John Chrysostom, homilies on Matthew and John.
Liturgy: The Orthodox Order of the Making of a Catechumen (baptismal exorcisms and renunciations); the icon of the Harrowing of Hades (Paschal troparia and hymnography).
Some religious scholars, like Bart Ehrman, attempt to deconstruct Christianity to destroy people’s belief in Christ by pointing out that Jesus was just one of many who claimed to be the messiah in those days. It is true that during that period, others arose to paint themselves as messiahs and to try to fulfill prophecy and liberate Judea from Roman occupation. Jews do something similar by saying that Jesus was just some random itinerant wandering Rabbi from a backwater town of yokels. Muslims continue this trend by relegating Jesus to merely a “prophet.” Okay, if there were many pretend messiahs at that time, who were they? Why don’t we know anything about them? What did they teach? What did they do? We don’t really know. Why? Because they were all counterfeits, probably raised up by demons to blunt the impact of the coming of the true messiah.
I recognize that this may be an unfamiliar story to mormons and even some protestants. As a mormon I was never taught about the harrowing of hell. Instead Mormons believe that Christ went to the spirit world and organized righteous spirits to preach to the dead in what they call the “spirit prison.” Christ did not personally visit the wicked. (D&C 138.) There are also many protestant groups that do not teach the harrowing of hell but instead minimize it, reject it or misunderstand it.