Satan And His Hooks #2
“Satan is a Spirit Being“
Satan And His Hooks #2
SATAN (DEVIL)
Satan is a spirit being who is the enemy of God.
Satan wants to stop God’s plans and tempt people to disobey God’s commands. Satan is seldom mentioned in the Old Testament. He is described as an angel who acts as the heavenly prosecutor (Job 1:6-12, 2:1-7 and Zechariah 3:1-2).
He is called “the satan” or “the accuser,” and there is nothing in the context to indicate that the angel is evil. It is not until the late Old Testament period that Satan appears as a tempter. In 1 Chronicles 21:1, the story of 2 Samuel 24:1 is retold with Satan described as an evil figure.
Some people think Lucifer in Isaiah 14:12 is a reference to Satan, but the context is clearly referring to the king of Babylon. Because of this, it is unlikely that any reference to Satan was intended. Because he is not mentioned that often, the Old Testament does not have a developed doctrine of Satan.
However, the Old Testament does contain the raw material that was the source of later doctrines. The Jews further developed the idea of Satan during the period between the Old and New Testaments. They also called him Belial, Mastema, and Sammael.
Three different conceptions of Satan appear during this time
First, the Satan of the Old Testament reappears in the roles of tempting people, of accusing them in heaven before God, and of hindering God’s saving plan.
Second, the Dead Sea Scrolls describe Satan as the leader of the evil forces and a spirit who attacks the righteous. This belief was probably influenced by the concept of the evil god in the Zoroastrian religion.
However, unlike the Zoroastrian idea, the Dead Sea Scrolls never present two gods battling against each other.
Instead, one God created both Belial and the Prince of Light, who is sure to win in the end, for God is with him.
Third, in some of these writings, Satan is often identified with Old Testament stories where his name was absent.
For instance, he lusted after Eve and therefore caused the fall (Wisdom of Solomon 2:24), he controls the angels who fell in Genesis 6:1-4, and he is a fallen angel himself .
The New Testament has a developed portrayal of Satan, and he comes with a whole list of names. These include Satan, the devil, Belial, Beelzebul, the Adversary, the Dragon, the Enemy, the Serpent, the Tester, and the Wicked One.
Satan is often described as the ruler of a host of angels (Matthew 25:41) and the controller of the world (Luke 4:6, Acts 26:18, 2 Corinthians 4:4), who especially governs all people who are not Christians (Mark 4:15, John 8:44, Acts 13:10 and Colossians 1:13).
He is opposed to God, and he wants to alienate all people from God. Because of this, he is an especially dangerous enemy of Christians (Luke 8:33, 1 Corinthians 7:5 and 1 Peter 5:8).
Christians must resist him and see through his cunning (2 Corinthians 2:11, Ephesians 6:11 and James 4:7). Satan works his evil will by tempting people (John 13:2 and Acts 5:3), by hindering God’s workers (1 Thessalonians 2:18), by accusing Christians before God (Revelation 12:10), and by controlling the evil people who resist the message of the gospel (2 Thessalonians 2:9, Revelation 2:9, 13 and 13:2).
Most importantly, however, the New Testament teaches us that Satan, who has been evil from the beginning (1 John 3:8), has now been bound and cast out of heaven because of Jesus’ ministry (Luke 10:18 and Revelation 12 ). While Satan is still a dangerous enemy, Jesus himself prays for us and has given us the powerful weapons of prayer, faith, and his blood.
Satan can still cause physical illness when God allows him to (2 Corinthians 12:7), and people can be delivered over to him for punishment (1 Corinthians 5:5 and 1 Timothy 1:20).
However, Satan will always be under God’s control, and the Bible tells us that God will eventually destroy him (Romans 16:20 and Revelation 20:10).
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