Kingdom Ready Blog

Presupposing that both God and Satan exist, why has God not already prevented Satan from trying in influence mankind?  This type of question has been asked for centuries.  It is the old “problem with evil” question.  Why does a “good” God, allow “evil” to exist?

If there is an evil supernatural being like The Devil/Satan, many ask why God created such a being in the first place?  Even if God created him to be good yet like man he had the freewill ability to turn away from God, then why did God not destroy Satan instead of letting him roam around and influence Eve (and less directly Adam) into sinning and bringing the curse of death upon humanity? Why is Satan free to tempt mankind all the way up until the end of the age at Christ’s return? These are good questions.

In my recent examination of the biblical subject of The Devil/Satan, I ran across this article by Dr. Norman Geisler.  I thought he brought up some good points to consider.

Enjoy!

The Reality of Satan

By Dr. Norman Geisler

(from Baker’s Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics, Baker, 1999)

A good deal of skepticism has been expressed about Satan. Those who take the Bible seriously are obliged to believe in Satan’s existence, since the Bible unmistakably refers to the demonic. Nonetheless, it is objected by skeptics and atheists that belief in a sinister evil power in the universe is outmoded and superstitious.

We’ve had some good debate on the Satan/Devil subject here on KR lately.  So I thought I would share another article on the subject.  This one is from Tassos Kioulachoglou who writes/runs the “Journal of Biblical Accuracy” website. Tassos has published his site for a good 15 years now as he first started it back around 1996.

BTW, I took the liberty of  doing some additional bolding in his Scriptural quotes – especially the personal pronouns “he”.  That in itself is something that I would like for a non-literal devil proponent to explain.  Why the use of personal pronouns for something non-personal? Why is the definite article used (THE Devil, THE Satan, not just “a” Satan/adversary)?

I grew up in the Advent Christian faith of my father and grandfather and as such, I was taught (though not that explicitly – more matter of fact) that Satan or The Devil was a fallen angel that opposed God and as such was evil – a very, very, bad hombre.  Him being real and in literal existence was something that I just accepted as the way things were.  Plus the world at large depicted “The Devil” as the embodiment of evil (though often humorously in literature, television and the movies) and of course the Bible spoke of The Devil, Satan, The Serpent, etc., so it all seemed to match up.

Ever since last year’s Theology Conference when discussing the Trinity with some of my fellow attendees and how people can become enraged about defending it, I have thought about how the movie “The Matrix” tied into biblical thought.  At the time my thoughts were along the lines of how people who became so enraged regarding the trinity, that they were like the people of the Matrix that were taken over by the “Agents” who could possess/become anyone in order to defend the deception of The Matrix.  It is an intriguing idea to me and after doing some web searches I’ve found some others who also have thought along the same lines.  I thought I would share one of them here in this post and perhaps the others later on.

This was written by Peter Roberts for the web site “vision.org”  The site describes itself as one that “examines current issues” but not like a typical news site.  Instead they say they seek “to evaluate the news of the day in a more in-depth way than most issue-oriented publications. Our mission is to give our readers a deeper understanding of the causes of problems with which humanity wrestles.” And better still they say the following “Like every other information or news source, we do have a certain perspective. Vision.org brings insight into the complex social, moral and philosophical questions that confront society by examining them through the wisdom of an ancient source, the Bible. We believe that the principles contained in that book are still relevant and can be applied to help solve the global, national and personal conflicts that we face. But we do not proselytize, nor do we seek to convert anyone to any denomination or religious belief. Our only goal is to reestablish the Bible as a credible voice in the discussion of ideas.”

Introduction

One of the figures that Scripture refers to, in both the Old and New Testaments, is “The Satan”. In addition, the New Testament refers to a figure called “The Devil”. For example, The Satan caused the catastrophes that befell Job, and The Devil is called “The father of lies”.

An important item to note is that the Hebrew word satan means “adversary”, or “accuser”; and the Greek word diabolos (from which we get the word “devil”) means “slanderer”.

I’ve been wanting to do this post for a couple of weeks now, but somehow could never find the time to get it totally finished until today.  I hope my fellow posters here on KR won’t mind if I go out of turn.  Just think of this as my long lost “Saturday” post.

Today I’m continuing in my quest to post more works from my collection of old theology writings that are now out of print and as far as I know are not yet out there in any digital form among the “ether” of the internet.

The following little poem is from a very old newspaper clipping that my parents had saved in a theology file they had put together over the years.  I truly do not know just how old it is, though from the looks of it it very well could be from the era of the 1940′s – 1950′s.  The author is listed as “H. A. Owens”.  But I have not been able to find any information about that person anywhere.

I’ve often thought that the “incarnation” excuse of trinitarians is totally absurd. A “fully God” AND “fully man” Jesus just wouldn’t be temptable.  One of the givens about God that we know from Scripture is that he is NOT capable of being tempted (James 1:13).

Therefore if Jesus is God, then Satan has got be a total moron. Trying to tempt God (who cannot be tempted) would be a total waste of time. And I for one don’t think that if Satan is capable of deceiving the entire world (Rev 12:9), he would be stupid enough to even try to tempt God Himself.  Therefore if Satan really did tempt Jesus (and that’s what our Bibles tell us) then it would seem to me that ol’ “serpent of old” knows something the trinitarians don’t know.