Theists and Satan

Great Debates
21

As Keeves has said, from the Jewish point of view, Satan is just a messenger of G-d, sent to provide temptation.

There is no active competition between Satan and G-d. There is competition in a person’s mind between doing the wishes of Satan (i.e., succumbing to the temptations that Satan has offered) and doing the wishes of G-d, but Satan does not desire to see evil done; he is only a messenger whose job it is to provide opportunity for choices to be made.

Chaim Mattis Keller
ckeller@schicktech.com

“Sherlock Holmes once said that once you have eliminated the
impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be
the answer. I, however, do not like to eliminate the impossible.
The impossible often has a kind of integrity to it that the merely improbable lacks.”
– Douglas Adams’s Dirk Gently, Holistic Detective

22

Fascinating thread. Of course, anything concerning the Prince of Darkness is fascinating----that’s why he’s so good at being attractive.

Adam: The Screwtape Letters are rather different from This Present Darkness in that Lewis is dealing with an elder demon instructing a younger one (Wormwood) in how to corrupt souls, and Peretti is dealing with spiritual warfare between angels and demons. Both good books, in my opinion, although Lewis is somewhat more cerebral in his approach.

I’ve never heard of any Christian denomination equating Satan with God, although I do know of some fundamentalist groups that give Satan more than his due, which is an old-timey approach to scaring the hell out of people with the hopes that they’ll be good. Satan is a fallen, defeated being, but he still has punch, for these who are ignorant of him or in league with him. The very best description I ever heard of Old Scratch comes from an ancient Keith Green record from about 20 years ago. The lyrics are supposed to be being sung by the devil, and they go like this:

**Oh, my job keeps getting easier
As time keeps slipping away;
I can imitate the brightest light
And make the night look just like day!
I put some truth in every lie
To tickle itching ears;
You know, I’m drawing people just like flies–
They like what they hear!
I’m gaining power by the hour,
They’re falling by the score…
It’s getting very simple now,
Since no one believes in me any more!

Oh, “Heaven’s just a state of mind”
My books read on your shelf;
Oh, have you heard that God is dead?
(I made that one up myself!)
They’re dabbling in magic spells,
They get their fortunes read;
You know, they heard the Truth, but turned away
And they followed me instead!
I used to have to sneak around,
But now they just open their doors;
You know, no one’s watching for my tricks,
Since no one believes in me any more!

Everyone likes a winner,
With my help, you’re guaranteed to win!
“Hey man, you ain’t no sinner!”
No! You got “the truth within”.
And as your life slips by you believe the lie
That you did it on your own—
But don’t worry! I’ll be there to help you share
Our dark…eternal…home!

Oh, my job keeps getting easier
As day slips into day,
The magazines, the newspapers
Print every word I say!
This world is just my spinning top,
It’s all like child’s play;
You know, I dream that it will never stop,
But I know it’s not that way…
But still my work goes on and on,
Always stronger than before;
I’m going to make it dark before the dawn
Since no one believes in me any more!

Well I used to have to sneak around,
But now they just open their doors;
It’s getting very easy now,
Since no one believes in me any more!
Well, I’m gaining power by the hour,
They’re falling by the score!
You know, no one’s watching for my tricks,
Since no one believes in me any more!**

(Copyright 1977 Sparrow Records, Inc. Words and music by Keith Green.)

That’s about the best description I can come up with as to what the devil is up to these days. What? You say you have kids who adore Hitler and shoot up their school, killing their classmates with automatic rifles? Bah! Satan had nothing to with influencing those kids----because we all know Satan doesn’t exist.
Right?

(Low demonic laughter from a distance.)

23

I suppose I could claim to be Theistic, although I can translate into nonTheistic languages as a general rule…

a) No entity, force, or spirit named Satan.

b) If, by “Satan”, you mean to inquire about my beliefs concerning an active force of Evil, that sort of thing, well, again, no–evil does not benefit. Evil does not benefit individual “evildoers”, nor is evil in service to some ultimately Evil entity. Evil thrives in darkess, where people cannot see clearly; it reigns in confusion, where one’s natural selfishness works against one’s own ultimate best interests.

c) To understand truth is to understand Truth–i.e., spiritual Truth is not something apart from or distinguishable from pragmatic truth, if you search with easy satiation for it/them. So empirical science, religious spirituality, or rational logic all serve the same ultimate ends.

d) We live in darkened and confused times, and it is for this reason, not because of inherent evil human nature, evil Satan entities, or an evil God ruling it all, that the world is such an evil-filled place.

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24

Oh fooey, that most certainly isn’t what I meant to say! Scratch that. Trugh is not something apart from or distinguishable from pragmatic truth as long as you do not accept easy satiation in your search for it/them. In other words, the convergence is an ultimate one, not always an easy one.

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25

Arg,I know there are demons. I once brought an occult paper into my home,and for 2 nights,my sons toy vaccuum started making the sounds without anyone pushing it. I didn’t want to believe it,but there wasn’t any physical explanation. I know,I expect the nonbelievers to rag me on this,but I was there. No,I didn’t think to call James Randi over to check,I wish I could’ve :slight_smile:

26

Yes, Adam, Satan exists (the temptation of Christ by Satan wasn’t metaphorical), but I have to agree with others that say we give him much more than his due, such as the car wreck thing. Also, Keeves and cmkeller, the Christian belief- as much as I’ve been taught, I think it came from an apocryphal(sp) book somwhere-is that Satan was an angel and tried to revolt against God at some point. He assembled an army of angels and fought in Heaven for the throne of God. He lost, of course, and was banished to earth. All Satan can do is tempt us to do evil; he can’t kill us (see Job) or make us do evil. He’s nowhere near God status, but he is very powerful (see 1st Peter). I don’t know where I heard it but I heard a quote that said “The greatest lie the devil ever told mankind was that he didn’t exist.” Anyone know where that came from?

27

Satan is real and currently resides inside my record collection, where to date he has been an excellent tenant.

28

vanillaice wrote:

Was this a battery-powered toy vacuum cleaner, or a completely manual (“push”) toy vacuum cleaner? (If battery-powered, it may have had a cheap contact switch of some sort that could’ve been left in an almost-but-not-quite-touching state.) What mechanism does it use to make its noise – a chip playing an electronic sample, a plastic clacker, a rotating clunker-box like in the “Rrrrraw Power” toy motorcycle-sound box I used to strap onto my bicycle as a kid? Did the mystery sounds stop as soon as you’d removed the occult paper from your house, or did it occur afterward, or did it stop while the paper was still sitting in your house?

Questions like these don’t make for as much fun as, say, The Amityville Horror, but like Cecil I prefer to seek out the truth no matter how boring it is.

I’m not flying fast, just orbiting low.

29

The quote was used in the movie The Usual Suspects. I suspect this was not the original source.

30

I’m not 100% sure on this, but I believe that “Lucifer” means “Morning Star” in Hebrew. (Can anyone verify?) Lucifer is another name for Satan. More specificaly, it’s the name of the angel who BECAME Satan (Meaning “accuser” or “adversary” in Hebrew) after the rebellion against God. The two names are used interchangably, and both refer to the devil.

Keeves said:

Amen.

CmKeller said:

[quote]
As Keeves has said, from the Jewish point of view, Satan is just a messenger of G-d, sent to provide temptation.
[/quote
This is where our views differ. As far as I know, I think that most Christian sects don’t believe Satan is God’s messenger.

Pickman: That song you gave the lyrics to, is one of the greatest descriptions of Satan that I’ve ever heard. Thank you for posting it for us. :slight_smile:

Longhorn: Satan is indeed a powerful adversary. But he is also capable of performing “miracles.” Note the magicians in Pharoah’s temple when Moses turned the rod into a snake. And the pigs that the demons entered in Matthew is an example of demons influencing the physical realm. IMO, Christians underestimate Satan’s power too often.

Kellibelli: Your beliefs sound VERY much like those Trills in “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.” (Anyone agree?)

I’m not sure who said it, but I agree with it 100%

Adam

“Life is hard…but God is good”

31

Woah! I just read my post, and I missed a few keys there. I apologize for the way that post looks. I hope you guys can make it out.

Adam

32

Pretty sure Lucifer means “light bringer.” Supposedly, his job was to test humans and help them become better people, sort of like an exam proctor. Think of Job, where Satan’s been walking around in the world and is given both explicit permission to test Job’s faith and explicit limits on what he can do to harm Job.

33

You know, ARG220, you could have just asked…

But seriously folks, my favorite version of the battle of heaven and hell is Anne Rice’s hypothesis in her vampire chronicles (I first saw it in Memnoch The Devil) where Satan is not so much bad as misunderstood. The guy simply had a disagreement with God as to whom would be allowed in Heaven, and God didn’t allow anyone in - everyone was pretty much floating around. And Satan was allowed to make a home for these souls. And he spends a lot of the novel pissed that God is not letting more people into heaven, and wants everyone in hell to be promoted, so to speak.

It’s an interesting take that I’m sure is not unique to Anne Rice…

Brian O’Neill
CMC International Records
rockuniverse.com/cmc/cmc.html

ICQ 35294890
AIM Scrabble1
Yahoo Messenger Brian_ONeill

34

ARG220, your history of Lucifer is certainly not bible-based. Where is it from?

35

ARG220 wrote

This is 100% correct regarding “Satan”.

For “Lucifer”, I think he’s on the right track for meaning, but not for language. “Lucifer” is not similar to any Hebrew words as far as I can see. On the other hand, I think “luce” is either Latin or Greek for “light”, as in the word “translucent”.

36

Actually, FTR, the quote is:

“The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.”

37

“Lucifer” is Latin, not Hebrew. It comes from the old Latin root “luci”, meaning “light”. (The later root was “lux”, meaning the same thing.) “Lucifer” (literally, “light-bringer”), was originally applied to the “morning star”, or Venus, the appearance of which heralded the coming day. (This is what comes of not teaching Latin in public schools anymore!)

Slythe: don’t be too hard on Arg’s history of Satan. You’re correct in that it doesn’t come from the Bible, but it does come from another writing equally ancient. It actually comes from an apocryphal book written between 200 B.C. and late in the 1st century A.D. called the Book of Enoch, also known as the Ethiopic Enoch and sometimes 1st Enoch. It’s a long work, divided into six parts, but only the first part (chapters 1-36) concerns the history of Satan. Basically it says that Satan was an archangel, like Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael, and because of his rebellion against God and his corruption of other angels around him, God kicked him out of heaven onto the earth. (Another part of the story which is seldom mentioned is that part of the rebellion of the angels had to do with the fact that they had the serious hots for human women down on Earth----and since angels have no bodies, they couldn’t do much about it. Where their lust actually came from, however, is never explained. :slight_smile:
Compare this with Genesis 6:1-4, with the story of the Nephilim.) Satan tried to lead a rebellion against his Maker, and of course, being a created being, he failed, and so his war fizzled out.

The identification of Satan with the serpent does not have its origin in Genesis, which merely says “the serpent”. The idea that the serpent was actually Satan comes from a much later work, the Book of the Wisdom of Solomon. Satan is also given other names in other apocryphal books as well, for example, he is called “Matsema” in the Book of Jubilees, and “Sammael” in the books of 3rd Baruch and the Ascension of Isaiah. His three-fold purpose in life is described as temptation, accusation, and punishment, which also comes from 1st Enoch, but which has echoes throughout the canonical Scriptures.

All of these apocryphal books are not considered to be divinely inspirered, but since they offer some kind of version of the history behind some of these events that Scripture does not, they are often used to “fill in the gaps” in an unofficial manner, so to speak. Since such speculation has no bearing on the state of one’s salvation, it was never frowned upon by Church authority, and as a result, the popular idea that Satan is a former angel who led a rebellion, got kicked out of heaven with his pals, who then became demons, has passed on into common legend, although there are not many people who know the actual source of the original story. Adam obviously heard of it from somewhere, as did I, and probably most Christians at one time or another. I even heard Billy Graham allude to it once in a sermon he was giving.

Just for the record, the popular image of Satan as a red-skinned guy with goat horns and cloven hooves, carrying a pitchfork, comes from the Middle Ages, and is probably based on the goat-horned god of the ancient fertility religions of northern Europe (Wiccan, if you will), which was itself based on the Greek pastoral conception of Pan.

This concludes this test of the Emergency Demonic Detection System. We now join the following program already in progress.

38

Actually, there is Scripture to back up my story about Satan.

Jesus says, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven.” Luke 10:18

Peter says, “For if God did not spare the angels when they sinned, but sent them to hell.” 2 Peter 2:4

Jude says, “And the angels who did not keep their positions or authority, but abandonded their own home - these He has kept in darkness…” Jude:6

There is also a passage in Ezekiel that desribes the King of Tyre. But if you read the text, it is clear that it’s descrbing Satan, before his fall from heaven. Ezekiel 28: 12-19

Adam

“Life is hard…but God is good”

39

Another book recommendation: Many Waters, by Madeleine l’Engle. A couple of boys accidentally travel back in time, to just before the Great Flood. No serious scholarship here, just very lightweight sci-fi, in the same line as the author’s other books (A Wrinkle In Time, A Wind In The Door, etc).
Not very similar to the other books that’ve been mentioned, but interesting to read.

I’m not a warlock. I’m a witch with a Y chromosome.

40

Forgot to mention what the book has to do with this topic. During their trip to the past, the boys meet (among many other people) a number of Seraphim and Nephilim.