Just WHAT is Satan's Role?

[lekatt]

[QUOTE=kanicbird]
The reason is that Satan is the biggest ‘bully’ there.

Though that is used that way, the real reason is that we are in a spiritual war, there are rulers, authorities of this dark world and spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavens. God wants us to overcome this with His power. It has nothing to do with scaring people, it is about letting the truth out, that our struggle is NOT against our fellow man - that is Satan’s great deception - to make us think we are fighting flesh.
[/QUOTE]

I see no spiritual war, nor do I engage in war to help others find their peace in God. Keep it positive, God is love.

[MEBuckner]

[QUOTE=the raindog]
The “lake of fire” represents destruction—eternal destruction.
[/quote]

Sometimes the “lake of fire” is described as “the second death”; other times it’s described as the place where the Devil and the “false prophet” “will be tormented day and night forever and ever.”

There is no biblical basis for a burning, torturous hell.

And another angel, a third, followed them, saying in a loud voice: “If anyone worships the wild beast and its image, and receives a mark on his forehead or upon his hand, he will also drink of the wine of the anger of God that is poured out undiluted into the cup of his wrath, and he shall be tormented with fire and sulphur in the sight of the holy angels and in the sight of the Lamb. And the smoke of their torment ascends forever and ever, and day and night they have no rest, those who worship the wild beast and its image, and whoever receives the mark of its name.”

[elfkin477]

[QUOTE=MEBuckner]
Sometimes the “lake of fire” is described as “the second death”; other times it’s described as the place where the Devil and the “false prophet” “will be tormented day and night forever and ever.”

And another angel, a third, followed them, saying in a loud voice: “If anyone worships the wild beast and its image, and receives a mark on his forehead or upon his hand, he will also drink of the wine of the anger of God that is poured out undiluted into the cup of his wrath, and he shall be tormented with fire and sulphur in the sight of the holy angels and in the sight of the Lamb. And the smoke of their torment ascends forever and ever, and day and night they have no rest, those who worship the wild beast and its image, and whoever receives the mark of its name.”
[/QUOTE]
But that’s not a description of hell. It’s what is supposed to happen on Earth to those who follow the antichrist. I was taught that they still have a chance to see god’s light during those 1000 years that Satan will rule on Earth and remove themselves from the darkness. Is there any counter evidence to suggest that the marked will have immutably placed themselves beyond God’s grace, and they cannot be forgiven?

[smiling_bandit]

[QUOTE=lekatt]
I see no spiritual war, nor do I engage in war to help others find their peace in God. Keep it positive, God is love.
[/QUOTE]

But not all love is godly.

Keeping it simple work for the young. But as we age new horizons and questions open up.

[Freudian_Slit]

But what is Satan’s deal? He wants us to be evil and stray from God…but then he punishes us for it?

I like the Satan who actually stirs up rebellion, who encourages man to go up against God. You know, before selling out and punishing souls because God doesn’t want that kind of bad press. The devil of “Paradise Lost.” (And "The Devil’s Advocate.)

[VinylTurnip]

[QUOTE=lekatt]
I see no spiritual war, nor do I engage in war to help others find their peace in God. Keep it positive, God is love.
[/QUOTE]

Thanks. I’ll put this morsel of inspiration on my wall between the “Keep on Truckin’” and “HANG IN THERE, BABY!” posters.

[Little_Nemo]

Seriously though, most Christians would say he tempts people away from God. True, he cannot force people to do anything , but by muring people into various temptations, he causes people to be seperated from God.

I think this raises an important point. Satan doesn’t care if you kill your neighbour or beat your children or rob the local liquor store. He’s rebelling against God and he wants to hurt God in the only way he can - which is to convince people to turn away from God. So Satan’s not interested in what people do to each other except as it affects their relationship with God.

[kingpengvin]

Where’s Satan?

Well according to Dante, Satan is down in the lowest level of Hell, up to his armpits in ice munching on Judas’s head.

That’s a long time… you’d figure he’d get tired of it but a bite of Judas head must be like a Lay’s Potato chip… you just can’t have one.

[BrainGlutton]

[QUOTE=OneCentStamp]
the raindog is a Jehovah’s Witness, one of the very few Christian denominations that completely rejects the Trinity and the divinity of Christ.
[/QUOTE]

Oh, yeh . . . I was asked to be one, once, but I couldn’t 'cause I didn’t see the accident. Thank you, I’ll be here all week, try the veal!

[BrainGlutton]

From the “Don Juan in Hell” segment of Man and Superman, by George Bernard Shaw:

ANA. Can anybody—can I go to Heaven if I want to?

THE DEVIL. [rather contemptuously] Certainly, if your taste lies that way.

ANA. But why doesn’t everybody go to Heaven, then?

THE STATUE. [chuckling] I can tell you that, my dear. It’s because heaven is the most angelically dull place in all creation: that’s why.

THE DEVIL. His excellency the Commander puts it with military bluntness; but the strain of living in Heaven is intolerable. There is a notion that I was turned out of it; but as a matter of fact nothing could have induced me to stay there. I simply left it and organized this place.

THE STATUE. I don’t wonder at it. Nobody could stand an eternity of heaven.

THE DEVIL. Oh, it suits some people. Let us be just, Commander: it is a question of temperament. I don’t admire the heavenly temperament: I don’t understand it: I don’t know that I particularly want to understand it; but it takes all sorts to make a universe. There is no accounting for tastes: there are people who like it. I think Don Juan would like it.

DON JUAN. But—pardon my frankness—could you really go back there if you desired to; or are the grapes sour?

THE DEVIL. Back there! I often go back there. Have you never read the book of Job? Have you any canonical authority for assuming that there is any barrier between our circle and the other one?

ANA. But surely there is a great gulf fixed.

THE DEVIL. Dear lady: a parable must not be taken literally. The gulf is the difference between the angelic and the diabolic temperament. What more impassable gulf could you have? Think of what you have seen on earth. There is no physical gulf between the philosopher’s class room and the bull ring; but the bull fighters do not come to the class room for all that. Have you ever been in the country where I have the largest following—England? There they have great racecourses, and also concert rooms where they play the classical compositions of his Excellency’s friend Mozart. Those who go to the racecourses can stay away from them and go to the classical concerts instead if they like: there is no law against it; for Englishmen never will be slaves: they are free to do whatever the Government and public opinion allows them to do. And the classical concert is admitted to be a higher, more cultivated, poetic, intellectual, ennobling place than the racecourse. But do the lovers of racing desert their sport and flock to the concert room? Not they. They would suffer there all the weariness the Commander has suffered in heaven. There is the great gulf of the parable between the two places. A mere physical gulf they could bridge; or at least I could bridge it for them (the earth is full of Devil’s Bridges); but the gulf of dislike is impassable and eternal. And that is the only gulf that separates my friends here from those who are invidiously called the blest.

ANA. I shall go to heaven at once.

THE STATUE. My child; one word of warning first. Let me complete my friend Lucifer’s similitude of the classical concert. At every one of those concerts in England you will find rows of weary people who are there, not because they really like classical music, but because they think they ought to like it. Well, there is the same thing in heaven. A number of people sit there in glory, not because they are happy, but because they think they owe it to their position to be in heaven. They are almost all English.

THE DEVIL. Yes: the Southerners give it up and join me just as you have done. But the English really do not seem to know when they are thoroughly miserable. An Englishman thinks he is moral when he is only uncomfortable.

[Hunter_Hawk]

[QUOTE=marshmallow]
ISo the timeline goes:

God makes the universe and man
We eat that fruit and sin (smooth move, Eve)
God punishes man
Insert ~4,000 years here
Jesus comes and sacrifices himself, to himself (since Jesus and God are the same)
Insert last 2,000 years here
Jesus comes again and kills everyone, battles Satan
People who believe in Jesus chill in heaven, people who don’t prostrate themselves before the lamb (like me) burn

…then what? An eternity of burning and flying around in the clouds? That was a random 6,000 years for…what?
[/QUOTE]

Look, I know it all seems like kind of a letdown at the end…but just wait till the expansion pack comes out.

@Polycarp

Under the influence of Zoroastrian dualism, this role got altered into rebel archangel and/or evil demigod, the sort of antithesis to God that clutters up fiction from Milton to Cabell.

In fairness, Cabell’s take on Satan is more interesting than that.

[TokyoBayer]

Unfortunately, I couldn’t find my copy of Elaine Pagels’ excellent book, The Origin of Satan: How Christians Demonized Jews, Pagans, and Heretics who gives a fascinating answer to where the Christian concept of Satan came from.

From a talk she gave in Utah in which she summarizes her book. From there, she talks about the first emergence of what later becomes the current view of Satan.

Where did the figure of Satan originate, and what is he doing there? Satan is scarcely present in traditional Judaism to this day - and not present at all in the form that Christians later came to know him, as the leader of an “evil empire,” an army of hostile spirits who make war on God and humankind alike. Yet when I began to investigate these questions, I discovered that images of evil spirits did develop and proliferate in certain Jewish sources in late antiquity, from about 150 years before the common era.

Significantly, they did not develop among groups later taken to represent the main currents of Judaism, but specifically among groups of “dissident Jews” - groups that ranged from the Jewish sectarians who wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls to the followers of Jesus
of Nazareth. Within decades, the figure of Satan - and the image of cosmic war - became central to Christian - and later to Muslim - tradition. How did this happen?

In the book, she goes over his appearances in the Old Testament, in which he is a completely different creature.

The earliest mention of Satan occurs in a few scattered references in the Hebrew Bible. Jewish storytellers introduce a supernatural figure they call h a satan, which can be translated from Hebrew as “the adversary,” or “the opposer,” or “the obstructer.” But this supernatural “opposer” never dares to oppose God. On the contrary, he is one of God’s obedient servants, his messengers, called in Hebrew malakim, members of the heavenly court. Translated into Greek, malak becomes angelos, from which we get the word “angel.”

The satans (note the plural and lack of capitalization) of old were messengers of God, but ones who served as the “heavies.” This also changed and we got one Satan who appeared in Job.

The book of Job, for example, pictures Satan as an angel, one of the “sons of God,” a member of God’s council—a kind of divine “prosecuting attorney” to whom God assigns the task of afflicting Job in order to test the limits of his loyalty—indeed, a kind of “devil’s advocate.” But in Job, as in all classical Hebrew sources, Satan never acts independently, never on his own initiative; on the contrary, he remains one of God’s angels, entirely subject
to God’s will.

In the 2nd century BCE, the Essenes had started the concept of a Cosmic War with an Anti-god. The mainstream majority Jews who did not follow their traditions where then vilified by saying that they were instruments of evil. This was adapted by the writers of the Gospels, and starting with writer called Mark and expanded upon by the writers who based their versions on him (or “Q”).

The example which Paige uses to show the progressive vilification of Jews is the trials of Christ; how the Romans Jews are increasingly are treated nicely and the Jews are increasing seen at fault. Indeed, the notoriously bloody Pilate becomes afraid of the Jews as the later versions are written. This chapter itself is worth the $10.36 from Amazon.

Christianity latched onto the concept of a cosmic battle between good (themselves) and evil (others) which has been utilized by many within the religion to inflict a great deal of, well we could call it “evil” in the world.

Surely none of us will imagine that Christianity invented human hostility, which is probably as old as the human race itself. But we can see that the Christian movement gave to hostility a moral interpretation - one that has proven enormously powerful.
. . .
What Christians added was a moral and religious interpretation of difference - one often read to mean that “we are God’s people, and you are Satan’s people.”

[Der_Trihs]

[QUOTE=Charger]
I don’t know the origin of the pitchfork, red suit, and hooves, however. Except that the goat is symbolic of a “corrupted lamb.” Biblically, he started out as one of the most beautiful angels, then he got cocky.
[QUOTE=Staggerlee]
I’ve always heard that the hoofed/horned image is another Christian assimilation of heathen mythology, namely Pan - a bit too fun-loving and nature-worshipping to be tolerated..
[/QUOTE]

[/QUOTE]
Another theory I’ve heard is that the classic devil image came about due to the tendancy of food in the Dark Ages to be poorly preserved; that people had hallucinations due to eating moldy food. And times being what they were, when they “saw” a big guy with horns and goat legs raping virgins and eating babies, they believed it was real and were believed when they told others.

[BrainGlutton]

Just in case any of you seekers (there’s one born every minute!) want the real Truth, here it is – from Revelation X: The “Bob” Apocryphon, Chapter 8: “Heaven and Hell”:

Everything written regarding Hell in all bibles, from the Zoroastrian up through Dante to Chick Comics, is literally true (except the name of the author). The traditional Hell exists, complete with Lake of Fire, demons, and eternal torment; they aren’t lying about that. What they don’t tell you is that only religious people go there.

It’s a rare SubGenius that ends up in this Normal Hell, the lowest rung of the Ladder of Beforelives. THE HELL CLAUSE states that Hell is reserved for those who believe in it, and the lowest Circle is for those who think that if they don’t believe in it, they’ll go there. Hell is JHVH-1’s revenge on those who insult His intelligence by thinking He is as simple-minded, cruel and vengeful as THEY are. The Devil’s job is to pester them, to milk out every last drop of human faith and credence. Satan manages Hell, and it’s a very busy place these days, but his responsibilities regarding earthly life cover only religious nuts. JHVH-1 assigned him to create some kind of secondary Hell on earth, so Satan devised the idea of multiple religions, all believing in his existence but hating each other even more than they hate him. (In the end it doesn’t really matter whether those Normals are “good” or “bad” in life; Satan and JHVH-1 divvy up the souls 50-50, at random.)

<snip>

Pink Heaven (frequently misidentified as Christian Heaven or Islamic Paradise) is nothing but a more sophisticated Hell, with air conditioning. In many ways, it is far worse. At least in Hell, you know where you stand. The sheep in Heaven can’t even guess how utterly doomed they truly are.

“Heaven” is only the second rung up the Beforelife ladder, and, like Hell, is reserved for believers. It consists of an absence not only of pain, but also of pleasure.

Great deal, huh? You’re damned if you do, and damned if you don’t. Disobedient souls burn in Hell forever, but obedient souls “belong to God.” As if making you an employee all your LIFE wasn’t bad enough, you’re enslaved in the AFTERLIFE as well! You get all the joy of a fundamentalist’s lifestyle, with no hope of release – not even death!

<snip>

In “Heaven” there dwell certain hungry, rapacious predator spirits, called Theocrats, which vampirize the PPQF of weaker spirits in order to “live” forever at the expense of their victims.

"The Theocrats enslave other spirits to provide psychic energy, just as slaves or employees on Eart provide physical labor . . . They obtain these victims by posing as gods and persuading the religious believers to come to them voluntarily after death thinking they are entering “eternal bliss in Heaven.”

"Many notorious tyrants, conquerors, evil religious leaders, black magicians and criminals have become Theocrats after death, but so have some saints and benign geniuses. Power corrupts and the prospect of achieving immortality corrupts even more. Many people with highly developed souls, whose earthly lives were lived quite ethically, chose to become Theocrats after death . . . This has been especially true for people who were religiously devout, then found out the horrible truth about the gods after death.

"The daily activities of a Fundamentalist Theocratic band organized as Heaven are similar to a church service as such sects hold them on Earth, except that they go on perpetually. The Theocrat in charge poses as the Lord God Jehovah, and subordinate Theocrats pose as Christ, various Angels and Apostles, and so forth. “God” quotes the same Biblical passages and preaches the same sermons as preachers in the same sect do on Earth, and the congregation joins in singing the same hymns. . . . The Theocratic leaders then channel this collective psychic energy . . . For instance, there are dead Christians who think they are in Heaven, sitting around the throne of Jehovah “eternally singing his praises,” when they’re really just his slaves and possibly his dinner as well. Now you understand the real significance of “Holy Communion.”

". . . As fanatical belief in organized religion declines in the modern era, the Theocrats have even devised ways to persuade atheists and agnostics to join Theocratic bands after death. The most common is simply to invite them to join what appears to be a community of spirits that includes some of their previously-deceased relatives or friends, or some famous person they greatly admire . . . There are also “Heavens” whose “gods” claim to be politicians, movie stars, writers, scientists, rock stars, or even fictional characters."

– excerpted from Kyle Griffith’s War in Heaven.

The most insidiously cruel aspect of Pink Heaven/Normal Hell is that it’s all self-inflicted punishment. Nothing happens to those souls that they didn’t ask for, that wasn’t self-devised down to the smallest detail. And nastiest of all, just as their store of anguish is about to be used up, they are TOLD they could escape if only they would stop believing – BUT THAT ONLY MAKES IT WORSE. For, there they are, right in the thick of it, with flames searing their skin, or etheric vampires slowly devouring their very essence . . . so it’s just a bit difficult NOT to believe in it.

But there is hope! Now you can save your soul from Heaven! Just send it with $30 for shipping & handling costs to:

The Church of the SubGenius
c/o Reverend Ivan Stang
P.O. Box 181417
Cleveland Heights, OH 44118-1417

Eternal salvation guaranteed – OR TRIPLE YOUR MONEY BACK!

[Jragon]

To be honest I think he’s been freezing in a pit chewing on the ultimate betrayers™.

I’ve always liked Dante’s version of the Devil, the most pathetic creature in existence.

Edit: SubGenius always works too :D.

[ignis_glaciesque]

Me, I was a big fan of the idea of Satan as a sort of ‘divine prosecuting attorney’, who would subject believers to temptations and trials to prove their faith was genuine and steadfast. I mean, the idea that Satan was God’s ultimate adversary was silly to me. God has smitten other adversaries out of existence for lesser offenses…

[BrainGlutton]

Interesting trivia: In Islamic theology/mythology, Iblis/Shaitan is not a rebellious angel but a rebellious djinn – because angels have no free will and cannot rebel against God at all, but djinn have and can.