Amen to that Johnny.
Nice withnail pic, by the way 
Appreciate that Johnny, and also your willingness to be transparent about your own struggles and all. Regardless the source of our opposition - spiritual/psychological/physical/relational, we can cling to the hope that God is good, He is real, He is Love, and He will never give up on us.
Caleb
Thank you, Caleb. Your simple statement of what we as Universalists place our hope in has brought a tear to my eye. Feeling a bit emotionally fragile right now. God bless you.
J
Dick mentions the Nephilim “watchers,” and I can’t resist illustrating:
As I was drawing this, it became apparent that an eye just “belonged” inside the cave thing. I couldn’t help thinking of Jason’s mention in STTH of the fallen angels watching us and learning the far-reaching consequences of their rebellion. Hence, the title: The Watcher. 
I have often heard Christians say that they are fighting with Satan or demonic forces. Often I’ll bite my tongue; but at times I’ll reply by saying:
I wonder if Satan even knows who we are? There are 7 billion people in this world. What is the likelihood that any one person would come in contact with him? Additionally, the world population has increased exponentially since the scriptures were written, while the number of fallen angels has remained constant… would there not be a diminishing contact between them and humans?
But, more importantly: we do not need Satan or fallen angels to tempt us with evil. Blaming evils on Satan or demons is blame-shifting. We are responsible for our own thoughts and actions. We have no room to say, “the devil made me do it.” Rather, I did it because I am selfish, love only myself, and hate God as well as my neighbor.
Kind of Off-track - but I just finished an excellent novel by Tim Powers called “Declare” - an ingenious re-telling of the Cold War as a battle between fallen angels and the rest of the world. Very intricate, subtle, and well-told.
Excellent art Cindy
Cindy, that is beautiful
Wow that’s superb Cindy - you are very talented 
Thanks, guys. I loved the idea of our being set forth as a demonstration/example for the benefit of lost angels. So interesting to think that perhaps one reason Father allows this current, apparent mess to continue is to do good to ALL of His creatures.
All creatures. Yes, yes, yes.
Every human, every ape, every angel, every ET, every fish and bird and mammal and dinosaur, great and small, weird and wonderful, every babe in God’s great big family in love without pain forever and ever.
Well I must consider myself more than a little surprised reading what I have here. You people are so knowledgable on universalism, but sometimes so ignorant when it comes to basic knowledge and doctrines. EU should enhance and increase your general biblical knowledge. it should put things into perspective. It certainly did for me. If ‘A’ is now true, then that must change ‘B,C and D’. But that clearly isn’t happening for all of you. That is sad. You are getting worked up about something that never happened. Satan never rebelled against God, He never took 1/3 of the angels with him and there are no fallen angels who are now demons. That is absolute nonsense. It is a catholic myth and has no basis in scripture. Revelations is describing a future event of US overcoming the enemy of our flesh. The destruction of the high places in our lives. Satan was MADE wicked from the beginning. He never got jealous. He was never the arch-angel in charge of music in heaven. Useless superstitions will paralyze you with all sorts of nonsense thoughts. particularly is you are not 100% well mentally. I have seen it many times.
God controls Satan and all that he does. He is a tool and nothing more. A tool God uses to challenge us, to change us and to make us like Christ. Nothing else. Isaiah say he created the waster to destroy. I am more concerned about some of the paranoid thoughts I’ve read. If this is you, then please consider reaching out to your GP for referral to a mental health expert. The brain can malfunction just like any other part of our body. it is very easy for a chemical imbalance to happen in our brains. Lack of sleep, exposure to chemicals, other medications we take. Stress. It all happens.
I don’t fear Satan. He can’t touch me or you without the express authority of God to do so. So the question to be asked, if God releases him to act in our lives, then why has he done so? How are we to respond to this? This is the time we need to start asking God to reveal what he wants to deal with in our lives and what we need to do to be obedient to his dealings. Otherwise we go through it again and again until we have an epiphany. And we finally get revelation about what in our character needs changing. It is not the time to have grandious, supersticious and wierd thoughts. That will not help us put on Christ.
There is no shame in needing help and seeking help from a mental health professional does not make you a lesser Christian.
I hope this helps some of you.
Thanks for sharing, watchman. You might want to sound a little less patronising in future, but I appreciate that you have good intentions. I have major difficulties with your view, but hey-ho …
Not me.
Still, I await with bated breath further correction to my ignorance of basic knowledge and doctrines.
i don’t think he meant you…you’re agnostic about the devil as i am 
but the tone of that post…intended or not, yeesh.
i totally disagree with warfare style Christianity, focusing on this enemy and claiming territory and all that complete load of bollards…but i think there’s room for a middle ground for those that do believe in a devil and demons but do so without being mentally ill, gullable or whatever…i might disagree big time with them, but it’s not the same as the quasi-rabid DEVILBEHINDEVERYBUSH mentality i saw at work back in Canada (influenced by the likes of that charlaton Bob Larson, as an example).
back on topic, i think on Watchmen’s view (which is oddly more literal than mine on the devil as a tool created by God as a destroyer…hmm, dunno about that, but can see where it comes from), the devil (if a thinking being) would necessarily have his job re-assigned in the next world. he might be due punishment if he enjoyed the job too much, though that seems a bit unfair…you’d have to go mad doing what he does, and that might lead to a seeming “enjoyment”, if you didn’t start out wholly evil. if he’s unthinking and simply the name of a tool (like a sword or hammer), then redemption is moot. but then you have God implicated for a host of evil that really sounds blasphemous to me.
actually, the devil is Cthulhu, slumbering in deathlike repose in the farthest reaches of the Atlantic, sending his psychic dreams to tempt people to do the sorts of things that would wake him up. 
Of course, James me old mucker .
Actually, I believe in ‘the devil’ the same way Captain Cutshaw does in William Peter Blatty’s Exorcist follow-up The Ninth Configuration:
“I believe in the Devil alright. And you know why? Because the prick keeps doing commercials.”
If The Exorcist is a profound meditation on the problem of evil (which I think it is), then The Ninth Configuration is a profound meditation on the problem of goodness, as exemplified in this exchange between two of the characters:
Colonel Kane: You’re convinced that God is dead because there’s evil in the world.
Captain Cutshaw: Correct.
Colonel Kane: Then why don’t you think He’s alive because of the goodness in the world?
Now there’s a thought …
Where’s a Norwegian sea captain when you need one … There Hastur be one somewhere … He must of Soth-Oth’d
Yog might be right, there…we Shub definitely try to find him.