Board index ‹ Satan

[Head William]

I will let you convince me as a heathen about the devil for example,. please do it in love child like ok. any gloves and it's not truth.

[jimwalton]

Sure, let’s talk about Satan.

The Old Testament doesn’t say much about him. We don’t get to find out where he came from, how he got the way he is, or much of anything, really. We know that God created everything good, so God created him, but he must have been good at the time. Whatever happened to him to make him the way he is was his own doing, not God’s.

In the Old Testament, Satan is described mostly as an adversary who opposes goodness and God-ness, but he is also pictured as a being whose actions are under God’s rule. He can only function within the walls of what God allows him to do, though he acts with his own free will. In other words, God doesn’t make him do the things he does; he does them on his own.

In the New Testament, we learn much more about him. He is a spiritual being who is a powerful enemy to Jesus, working against him at every turn, tempting him and opposing him. But he knows well who Jesus is, and fears Jesus. His power is no match for Jesus’ power. Demons possess people and cause them to act weirdly. Jesus has complete power over them. Satan seeks to lead people astray, to deceive people with things that seem to be true but aren’t, and to destroy Christians. He also seems to have some power over what we would call natural phenomena, and can possibly affect things like the weather, and he can make people sick.

By the time we get to the book of Revelation we find out that Satan has been at work all along resisting God, deceiving people, destroying things, and will ultimately make a play to overthrow God and take possession of God’s throne. He doesn’t have such power, and God easily conquers him once and for all and sends him to and eternal destiny of fiery torment.

You want me to convince you of these things. The only occasional actual evidence we ever see of this stuff is in demon possession of people. Other than that, we know there is plenty of evil and suffering in the world, and lots of people believing lies about spiritual things. It’s probably safe to say we are all horrified by the capability of human beings to do terrible things. Some of these terrible things come from the wickedness of our own hearts, but the Bible says that some of it can come from Satan. There’s no proof of that (no one ever sees Satan), but it’s an interpretation people make based on what they believe about God and the Bible.

[Head William]

Take, for example: sawtamn (Satan) is a verb, a doing word , an action by man or even by god. Satan in the new testament is never a noun, but rather the Hebrew word, sawtamn.

[jimwalton]

Let’s talk about the terminology and the grammar.

Satan is only identified three times in the Old Testament: 1 Chronicles 21.1, Job 1-2, and Zechariah 3. Job was written first, then Chronicles, then Zechariah, so I’ll take them in that order.

In Job he is known as “The Satan”; it’s a noun with the definite article “the”. It probably, therefore, is a title, not a proper name. It’s best translated as “The Accuser”, describing his role or function. He acts like a court prosecutor. He is not necessarily a bad guy, nor does he oppose God or act as a leader of demonic forces. He challenges God’s policies like a lawyer in a court, raising questions of accountability against God. He plays the part of a challenger.

In 1 Chronicles 1.21, “Satan” is used as a proper name; it’s a personal noun. While most scholars think it’s talking about “Satan” the spiritual being, it is really just the common Hebrew noun for “adversary,” and could just have been a man suggesting to David that he take a census, and therefore was making a suggestion in opposition to God.

In Zechariah 3.1, he is again known as “The Satan,” (like Job), and is probably not a name. Like Job, this being’s role is to oppose and bring accusation against Joshua, the high priest.

In no cases is “satan” a verb, a doing word. They are all nouns.

In the New Testament, Satan first shows up in Matthew 4.10. The Greek word is “satana,” a noun meaning “Adversary”. In every other place in the NT (33 times), “Satan” is also a noun.

[Head William]

I reject all that you've said on the basis that ive heard that same old song in Ireland from every religious Christian who smokes and drinks and curses etc etc they say they believe in the devil but only on sunday.

[jimwalton]

Well, I can’t speak for people who are hypocrites, I can only tell you what the Bible says and what it means. Every movement has people participating who are pretenders. We don’t evaluate a movement by its pretenders, but by its teachings and those who are serious about following it.

[Head William]

Is it GOD or the DEVIL who creates or forms these things

1 LIGHT
2 DARKNESS
3 PEACE
4 EVIL

Would I be correct if I said the devil forms darkness and evil, and God creates Light and Peace? Or does the devil create all 4 things?

this is sort of baffling to me concerning the devil and his acts. what do you say?

[jimwalton]

The Bible says that God created light (Gen. 1.3) and that God is light (1 John 1.5). The other three are not things, per se. Darkness is the absence of light, not an entity in itself. Peace is a state of being, not a thing. Evil is not a thing either, per se. Evil doesn't have an existence of its own; rather, it is the corruption of some good that already exist. Evil is the absence of privation of something good, and it’s not of God’s doing. Evil is a result of some other free will besides God making a decision against God. I can’t say it was created by the devil, but I can say it was not created by God.

[Head William]

Isaiah 45 NIV v 2 - 7

I am the Lord, and there is no other;
apart from me there is no God.
so that from the rising of the sun
to the place of its setting
people may know there is none besides me.
I am the Lord, and there is no other.
I form the light and create darkness,
I bring prosperity and create disaster;
I, the Lord, do all these things

There is ONLY ONE GOD /NO DEVIL.....Its all GOD . check out sawtawn

[jimwalton]

Isaiah’s point in chapter 45 is that God is sovereign, and he’s the only king. He can use whatever and whoever he wants for his purposes. Just because he uses a heathen to do his work (a pagan emperor, for instance) doesn’t mean that he endorses what the emperor believes. But he’s God, and he can use even unbelievers to accomplish his purposes. He’s talking to his people, Israel, to explain to them that he will deliver them from Cyrus, the emperor of the first Persian Empire, but first he’s going to use Cyrus to accomplish some things.

Verse 7 is his climax of this particular section. Isaiah’s real point is that God is the only God, and there is no other deity. There may be other spiritual beings, but no other gods. Isaiah uses two illustrations of parallel pairs, one from nature (light and darkness) and one from history (prosperity and disaster). He uses a figure of speech using opposites to explain that God is king over all. No other being or force is sovereign as God is sovereign.

You can’t create light without also bringing on darkness. Turn on any flashlight, and you’ll also create shadows. On a sunny day the shadows are the strongest. Isaiah is using these word pictures to express God’s power and rule. When Isaiah says that “God created disaster,” he is not claiming that God has been a jerk and done something wrong. The word Isaiah uses is “ra”, which is the opposite of shalom. What Isaiah is saying is that if there are bad conditions in your life, it is because you are bearing the consequences of your own sin. It is the lack of God’s prosperity (shalom). And if there is darkness, that is a lack of light. But even darkness and disaster exist in a universe where God is the ruling king.

The word “Satan” doesn’t appear here. Lots of other texts, especially in the New Testament, let us know about Satan and what he does. The Bible treats Satan as a real being.