The Real Devil |
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CONTENTS Appendix
Some Problem Passages: References |
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Except
where otherwise stated the Scripture quotations in this publication are taken
from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyrighted 1946 and 1952 by
the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches
of Christ in the USA. |
Chapter One - Two Views of the Devil
One day in July 1974 a man stood
before a judge in London's famous court, the Old Bailey, with an unusual
defence: "Yes, I committed the crime of which you accuse me",
he said, "but I am not guilty. I couldn't help what I did, because I was
possessed by the devil at the time!". Needless
to say, the judge did not accept his plea.
All over the world there is a growing interest in this dark subject. We hear
many strange tales of people being possessed and controlled by the devil, or by
some lesser demon or evil spirit. What lies behind these stories? Is there
really a Prince of Darkness with a great army of invisible evil spirits roaming
around the world, who are the real cause of all the wickedness and the
suffering in this world? Or is the whole thing just a myth, like Santa Claus
and fairies?
There is only one way to get the true
answer to this question. The Bible has a great deal to tell us about it. But we
need to look at the Bible very, very carefully, because its
teaching about the devil is very often misunderstood.
The Well Known View
Most people who believe in God and
Jesus Christ also believe in the devil, otherwise known as Satan. If you ask
them to explain what the devil is, they would probably reply like this:
"He is a fallen angel. Once upon
a time he was one of the greatest angels in heaven, but he became proud, and
rebelled against God. So God drove Satan out of heaven, along with all those
angels who supported him. Now Satan and his wicked followers inhabit the earth
as evil spirits, tempting men to sin."
But some people, including the writer
and the publishers of this booklet, find that view very hard to accept. It
makes God look rather like a man with a plague of rats in his house, who deals
with it by driving out the rats into the house next door! Obviously the honest
way to deal with rats in your house is to kill them.
No decent man would get rid of rats by
dumping them on his neighbour. Why, then, should God Almighty deal with a
plague of rebellious angels by driving them out of His heavenly home to pester
us? Why did He not kill them?
The Serpent in the Garden of Eden
In those early days the serpent was
the most intelligent of all the animals. It "was more subtle than any
other wild creature that the LORD God had made" (Genesis 3:1). It seems as
if the serpent had the power to walk upright and it could certainly talk, and
it used this ability to persuade Eve and her husband to sin.
Those who believe in the fallen-angel
devil will say, "Ah yes, but it wasn't just a serpent. It was Satan, who
had taken possession of the serpent's body and was speaking through the
serpent."
To this suggestion there can only be
one answer. Who says so? The Book of Genesis certainly does not! Genesis
plainly says it was the serpent talking, and never even hints at the presence
of any evil spirit.
So does the apostle Paul. When he
referred to this incident he said, "the serpent deceived Eve by his
cunning" (2 Corinthians 11:3). Not, "Satan deceived Eve" as so
many people wrongly imagine, but, "the serpent".
It is interesting to see that Paul
does not say the serpent was "wicked", but just "cunning",
or, to use the word that Jesus used in Matthew 10:16, "wise". God has
never given laws to the animals, as He has to men. Consequently an animal
cannot sin, even though it may cause human beings to sin.
Paul does not blame Satan for Adam's
sin. Although he speaks of Adam's fall in several places, Paul never once
mentions the devil or Satan in this connection. Instead, he tells us plainly
who was to blame:
"Sin came into the world through
one man ... Adam" (Romans 5:12-14).
"That old serpent"
The only passage in the New Testament
that seems to teach the opposite is Revelation 12, where in verse 9 a weird
creature with seven heads is referred to as "that old serpent, called the
Devil and Satan". But, as is shown in the Appendix to this booklet, this
passage is not describing what happened in the Garden of Eden. It is a parable,
speaking of future events on earth. It does not tell us that the serpent in
Eden really was a fallen angel. Instead, it describes a serpent with seven
heads. Does anyone believe that the serpent in Eden was like that?
So the message of Genesis, and of other Bible writers who refer to Genesis, is
plain. Don't blame a fallen angel for the sinfulness of human nature. Put the
blame where it belongs: on Adam, and on his sinful children, including
ourselves.
The Law of Moses
The first five books of the Bible - Genesis,
Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy - are together called "The Law of
Moses", because he wrote them. They form a little over one-sixth of the
Bible that we have today, but for hundreds of years they were the only Bible
that God's people had, because the rest of the Bible had not been written then.
Nevertheless the Law of Moses was a complete
guidebook for the people of God at that time. It told them how to avoid sin and
how God wanted them to live. But it never mentions the devil, or Satan not
once.
This fact provokes an important
question. If there really is a fallen angel who tricks men into sinning, why
did God not warn His people about this deadly danger when He gave them this
early Bible, the Law of Moses? It rather looks as if God did not intend His
people in those early days to believe in a fallen-angel devil.
Of course, an argument based on silence can never be conclusive on its own. But
at least this is a valuable fact to bear in mind as we continue our study.
Other Old Testament Books
The Old Testament as a whole makes up
more than three-quarters of the Bible. Yet in all the Old Testament the devil
is never mentioned by that name, not once.
Even the name "Satan"
appears in only three or four places in the Old Testament. It seems from this
as if Satan was not regarded as a very important part of Old Testament
teaching. Let us try to discover who this "Satan" was, who played
such a small part in the Old Testament story.
The name "Satan" was not
just a meaningless label, like many of our names. It was a name with a meaning,
like "Grace" or "Livingstone". The Old Testament was mostly
written in Hebrew, and "satan" is a Hebrew
word "meaning "accuser" or "enemy". (In many editions
of the Bible it is translated "adversary", which is only an
old-fashioned word for enemy.) When this word is used as a name, it generally
has the Hebrew word for "the" in front of it. So the name means,
"The Accuser", or "The Enemy".
The only places in the Hebrew Old
Testament where we find this word Satan used in such a way that it might be
intended as a name are these: Psalm 109:6; 1 Chronicles 21:1; Job, chapters 1
and 2; and Zechariah 3:1,2.
In the first of these passages most
modern English Bibles do not use the name Satan, but translate it "an
accuser". Scholars now think that the Hebrew writer did not intend us to
take the word "satan" in this passage as a
name. It is obvious that in this passage, at least, this "accuser" or
"enemy" is an ordinary man.
Then there is 1 Chronicles 21:1, where
most translations regard Satan as a name. But even so, some modern translations
tell us that the word "Satan" can very well be translated here by the
English phrase "the adversary" (enemy). The English Revised Version,
for example, says this in a footnote. There is, in fact, a good reason for
believing that in 1 Chronicles 21:1 the Hebrew name, Satan, "The
Enemy", refers to an enemy army which scared David into counting his
soldiers. Another account of the same event (2 Samuel 24:1) says that it was
God who caused David to number his fighting men.
This does not mean that "The
Enemy" was God himself. In all the rest of the Bible when Satan is used as
a name, that is to say, with the Hebrew or Greek word "the" in front
of it - THE Enemy - it is never used of anything good.
It always refers to that which is bad, such as the wickedness of human nature,
or men opposing God or opposing God's people, and so it is most unlikely to
refer to God in this passage.
Nevertheless, the Bible does not
contradict itself. So we must try to explain how both "God" and
"The Enemy" could have been the cause of David's action. This is not
difficult if we look at what God said to Jerusalem in Isaiah 29:3: "I
(God) will encamp against you round about, and will besiege you with towers,
and I (God) will raise siege works against you."
Obviously God did not do these things
Himself. It clearly means that God caused an enemy army to do it. Similarly, 1
Chronicles 21:1 and 2 Samuel 24:1 agree in telling us that a human enemy made
David panic and do wrong, but that God was responsible for the presence of that
enemy army.
But if you suppose that Satan is a
great evil spirit you will find it impossible to explain the contradiction
between 1 Chronicles 21:1 and 2 Samuel 24:1. Try doing it, and see for yourself
that it can't be done unless you are prepared to argue that God directs the
actions of that evil spirit, which is quite contrary to what most people
believe about Satan.
Job and Zechariah
This leaves only two Old Testament
passages where "Satan" is clearly intended as a name, and where it
looks as if he might be some sort of supernatural being: Job 1 and 2, and
Zechariah 3.
But this is not necessarily so. The
Old Testament sometimes speaks of ordinary men as if they were supernatural
beings, just for the sake of emphasis. Consider this passage, for instance:
"God has taken His place in the
divine council; in the midst of the gods He holds judgment... I (God) say, 'You
are gods, sons of the Most High, all of you; nevertheless you shall die like
men'." (Psalm 82:1, 6, 7). Who were these beings that God called
"gods"? We do not need to guess the answer. The Lord Jesus Christ
tells us. He quoted this passage, and explained that these "gods"
were really only the human beings "to whom the word of God came"
(John 10:34-35). In other words, they were Israelites, or, as we call them
today, Jews. God called them "gods" to emphasise what highly
privileged people they were.
Human Adversaries
In much the same way, it seems evident
that the "Satan" in Job and Zechariah was not really a supernatural
being. "Satan", "The Enemy", in these two books may
have been one particularly bad man who was opposing God at the time. Or the
name may have been used as a kind of symbol, to represent all the wicked human
opposition to God and God's people. (There is an interesting parallel in
Deuteronomy 32:15, where "Jeshurun" looks
like the name of a man, but is actually a symbolic name, representing a whole
community of people.)
A close look at the first two chapters
of Job reveals that this is so. This particular Satan Job's
"Enemy" had no supernatural power of his own. Satan
had to borrow from God the power that he then used to make Job suffer (Job 1:11-12).
Job himself said that his sufferings actually came to him from God not
from some wicked supernatural being (1:21; 2:10). And the book of Job ends by
telling us that his brothers and sisters "comforted him for all the evil
that the LORD had brought upon him" (42:11). Evidently this Satan was an
evil man, or a group of evil men, full of envy towards Job, to whom God gave
the ability to make Job suffer, so that they might learn how wrong they were.
That leaves Zechariah 3, which tells
how the high priest Joshua was confronted by Satan. Fortunately this chapter is
explained for us in the Book of Ezra, which gives us a plain historical account
of Joshua's struggle with "Satan". Ezra 3 describes how Joshua led
the people to start rebuilding the ruined temple of God. But Joshua was not
left to do this in peace. Ezra 4:2-4 says that "the enemies of the people
of Judah and Benjamin heard that those who had returned from exile were rebuilding
the Temple", and they "tried to discourage and frighten the Jews and
keep them from building" (Today's English Version). These enemies are
represented in the parable-language of Zechariah 3 by Satan, "The
Enemy".
Who was Lucifer?
Those who believe in the fallen-angel
devil are very disappointed by the Old Testament. They realise that the Old
Testament ought to say that Satan is a fallen angel, if this really is what God
wants His people to believe. And, since it does not say any such thing, they
have searched for something the Old Testament that they can use as a basis for
their belief. They can only find two passages to use, of which this is the
first:
"How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! ... Thou
hast said in thine heart, 'I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne
above the stars of God' ... Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell"
(Isaiah 14:12-15, King James Version). Only someone desperate to uphold a shaky
theory would try to apply this passage to the devil. It clearly has nothing to
do with an angel. The very next verse goes on to say:
"They that see thee shall narrowly look upon thee, and consider thee,
saying, 'Is this the man that made the earth to tremble, that did shake
kingdoms?'" (verse 16). So Lucifer was not an
angel, he was a man. The beginning of the chapter tells us just who he was:
"Thou shalt take up this proverb
[or parable] against the King of Babylon, saying ..." (verse 4).
It is easy to see why this great man
was called "Lucifer". Lucifer is the old name of Venus, which is the
brightest star in the sky. In those days the kings of Babylon were the
mightiest kings on earth. The prophet Daniel said to one king of Babylon,
called Nebuchadnezzar:
"You, O king, have grown and
become strong. Your greatness has grown, and reaches to heaven, and your
dominion to the ends of the earth" (Daniel 4:22).
But the last of the mighty kings of
Babylon, whose greatness "reached to heaven", was to be brought low.
His downfall was to be a world-shaking event -something as spectacular as if
Lucifer (Venus) had fallen out of the sky.
The King of Babylon
Isaiah 14 is clearly a poetical
description of the fall of the King of Babylon. People who say, "It says
the King of Babylon, but it means Satan", are guilty ' rewriting the Bible
to suit themselves. It may seem strange to our modern minds that God should
tell this ancient king he would be cast down from heaven to hell. But this sort
of language is quite common in the Bible. For instance, these are the words of
the Lord Jesus to the wicked city of Capernaum, in the land of Israel:
"And thou, Capernaum, which art
exalted unto heaven, shall be brought down to hell" (Matthew 11:23, King
James Version).
Capernaum was not really in heaven;
this was just the Lord's way of describing her as a great and proud city.
Similarly, her collapse into hell is just the Bible's vivid way of saying that
Capernaum would become a very lowly place.
The Prince of Tyre
The only other Old Testament passage
that people sometimes wrongly apply to the fall of Satan in Ezekiel 28. But
here again we are told very plainly that the person concerned is a human king.
The chapter begins: "The word of the LORD came to me: 'Son of man, say to
the prince of Tyre' " and continues, "Son of man, raise a lamentation
over the prince of Tyre" (verses 1,2 and 12).
Ezekiel goes on to call this King of
Tyre a cherub who had been in Eden, and this leads some people to think that
this king was Satan in disguise. But there is no reason to think this. Three
chapters later, Ezekiel said that the King of Egypt and some other kings were
also in the Garden of Eden, and they cannot all have been the devil in person!
Obviously, this language is just Ezekiel's poetic way of saying that these
kings were especially privileged, through living in that part of the world
where God was at work amongst His people, Israel.
So we see that there is not a word in
the Old Testament to prove that Satan is a fallen angel. (Nor is there in the
New Testament, either. There are only two New Testament passages that speak of
Satan falling from heaven, and even they do not say that Satan was once an
angel. These passages are examined in an Appendix at the end of this booklet.)
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Chapter Three - What the Jews Believed
We can summarise the Old Testament
evidence like this. There is no mention of the devil anywhere in the Old
Testament. Satan is not mentioned until half way through the Old Testament, and
then he is only mentioned in four places. In two of these the word clearly
refers to an ordinary human enemy. In the other two, Satan is probably a symbol
of human wickedness, opposing God and His people. There is no mention of any
angel rebelling against God and being cast out of heaven.
The Old Testament is a Jewish book. How did the Jews themselves understand the
four Old Testament references to Satan? Did they believe in a supernatural
Satan, or did they look upon Satan as a symbol of human wickedness?
Here are the words of three scholars, none of them Christadelphians, who have
answered that question.
1. A Social Scientist, A. Lyons: "To the ancient Jews, who were hard-core
realists, Satan symbolised man's evil intentions."4
2. A Jewish Encyclopedia:
"Judaism (the Jewish religion) has never seriously accepted the concept of
a power almost co-equal with God and fighting for possession of the world or
individuals. Belief in a personal Satan is rare amongst Jews."5
3. A Jewish Rabbi, R. S. Brookes: "Judaism
has no place for the belief in the power of a Devil or Satan ... Satan is
rather the personification of evil, the evil inclination."6
It seems clear that in Old Testament
times the Jews did not believe in a supernatural Satan. They evidently held the
same view as the writer and the publishers of this booklet: that Satan is a
kind of parable, a symbol of human sinfulness.
Who Invented the Supernatural Devil?
We have seen that the Old Testament
does not teach the doctrine that Satan is a wicked spirit. Scholars tell us
that the ancient Jews did not believe this either. Yet by the time of Christ
many Jews and many Gentiles had come to believe in a fallen-angel Satan. Where,
then, did this doctrine come from?
Historians explain that it all began
in the country known as Persia, which today we call Iran. About five hundred
years before Christ the Jews lived under the Persian empire,
and they knew a lot about the religious beliefs of the Persians.
The Persian religion eventually came
to be known as Zoroastrianism. The Persians believed in many gods, but
especially in two great supernatural beings. One was a good spirit, called Ahura Mazda, the god of light and the giver of happiness.
The other was an evil spirit, called Angra Mainyu, the god of darkness and the source of unhappiness.
The Persians thought that these two great powers were constantly fighting for possession
of the world, and for the souls of men.
The Old Testament prophet Isaiah was
concerned about this false teaching, perhaps because he could see that some
Jews might be influenced by it. So in one of his prophecies he made a direct
attack on the Persian religion. Perhaps to make sure that nobody missed the
point, he addressed this particular prophecy to Cyrus, the King of Persia:
"Thus says the LORD to His
anointed, to Cyrus ... I am the LORD, and there is no other, besides me there
is no God ... I am the LORD, and there is no other. I form light and create
darkness, I make weal [happiness] and create woe [unhappiness], I am the LORD,
who do all these things" (Isaiah 45:1-7). In other words, God declared
that the Zoroastrian religion was wrong. There were not two supernatural
powers, there was only one God Himself. Angra
Mainyu, the Power of Darkness, did not exist. The
Lord God was the source of both light and darkness, both joy and suffering.
Isaiah was not the first to teach
this. Hundreds of years before, in one of the earliest books of the Bible, God
had said through Moses:
"See now that I, even I, am He,
and there is no God beside Me; I kill and I make alive; / wound and I heal; and
there is none that can deliver out of My hand" (Deuteronomy 32:39). Not,
"Satan wounds and God heals", but, "God wounds and God
heals."
Evil Spirits in the Old Testament
Another way to see what the ancient
Jews believed is to study the references to evil spirits in the Old Testament.
There are only a few passages in the whole of the Old Testament that speak of
evil spirits, or anything of the kind. All of them are quoted below. They
deserve a very careful reading, because people who have never noticed them
before are often astonished by them.
"And God sent an evil spirit
between Abimelech and the men of Shechem"
(Judges 9:23).
"Now the Spirit of the LORD
departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the LORD tormented him. And Saul's
servants said to him, 'Behold now, an evil spirit from God is tormenting you
... seek out a man who is skilful in playing the lyre; and you will be
well'." (1 Samuel 16:14-16). "And on the morrow an evil spirit from
God rushed upon Saul, and he raved within his house" (1 Samuel 18:10).
"Then an evil spirit from the
LORD came upon Saul, as he sat in his house with his spear in his hand ... And
Saul sought to pin David to the wall with the spear" (1 Samuel 19:9,10).
"Now therefore behold, the LORD
has put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these your prophets" (1 Kings
22:23; see also verses 19-22).
"He [God] cast upon them [Egypt]
the fierceness of His anger, wrath and indignation, and trouble, a band of
angels of evil" (Psalm 78:49, Revised Version).
"So the LORD sent a pestilence
upon Israel... And when the angel stretched out his hand toward Jerusalem to
destroy it, the LORD repented of the evil and said to the angel who was working
destruction among the people, 'It is enough; now stay your hand'." (2
Samuel 24:15,16). Evil spirits from the Lord, angels
of evil, an angel of destruction. This is all the Old
Testament has to say about "evil spirits". It is more than enough to
show what God's people believed in Old Testament
times.
To them, evil spirits did not mean
wicked spirits. It did not mean independent spirits, acting separately from
God. To the children of Israel in those days, evil spirits were righteous
spirits, spirits acting under God's command and doing His will, holy
angels, in fact, who inflicted punishments upon sinful men.
They were called "evil"
spirits simply because the men receiving punishment regarded it as an evil. In
these Bible passages - and in lots of others - the word
"evil" is not used to mean wickedness (although it is used in that
way sometimes). Here it is used just to mean, "something
unpleasant", or, "suffering". This was how Job used it when he
became ill; he said, "Shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall
we not receive evil [also from God]?" (Job 2:10).
There are many references to angels in
the Old Testament, and in every one the angels are portrayed as creatures under
God's control. There is no suggestion that an angel could possibly disobey God.
The possibility of a rebellion in heaven seems to be ruled out by this
Scripture:
"The LORD has established His
throne in the heavens, and His kingdom rules over all. Bless the LORD, O you
his angels, you mighty ones who do His word" (Psalm 103:19,20).
A Clear Answer
We have seen that there is a clear
answer to the question: what did God want His ancient nation, Israel, to
believe? It is this:
God is almighty. He is the Master of
the universe He created. There are no other gods, and no other spirit beings
except His own angels, who always do His will. Both happiness and unhappiness,
pleasure and pain, come from God Himself. He tolerates only one rebel in His
universe: man. And that is because some men are capable of being redeemed from
their fallen state.
But of fallen angels, or rebellious
spirit beings, the Old Testament knows nothing at all.
Chapter Four - The Devil in the New Testament
As soon as we turn from the Old
Testament to the New we meet a big problem. There Satan is given a second name,
the devil, and he is mentioned about as often in the very first book of the New
Testament as in all 39 Old Testament books put together. It certainly looks as
if the devil of the New Testament is a great spiritual monster. And the evil
spirits of the New Testament appear to be doing the devil's work, not
God's, as in the Old Testament.
Many unbelievers and Jews have a simple explanation for all this. They argue
that the New Testament contradicts the Old. They agree that the Old Testament
teaches there is no supernatural devil, but they say that the New Testament
teaches the opposite.
No believer could accept that
explanation. The Bible does not contradict itself. The Lord Jesus Christ
commands us to believe everything in the Old Testament. (See Luke 24:25; John
5:45-47; Luke 16:31; John 10:35; Luke 16:17; Matthew 5:18.). No, the New
Testament cannot possibly contradict the Old. There must be a better explanation
than that. Let's see if we can find one.
The Key that Will Not Fit
Suppose that you have just taken on a
new job, as caretaker over a large new building full of offices. The manager
has given you what he calls a master key, which he says will open every door in
the building. After he has gone you
decide to try out this key. The first lock you tackle opens easily. So does the
next, and the one after that. The next lock is a stiff one, but with a little
effort you are able to make the key turn this lock, too. Then come two more
locks that open smoothly, and you put the key back in your pocket, satisfied.
"This really must be the master key", you say to yourself. "It
will open anything!" But the next day you have a disappointment. You
attempt to open another door, and nothing you can do will make the lock turn.
So you decide to go all round the building trying every door. At the end you
realise that you were satisfied too easily on the previous day. This key opens
many of the locks, but not all. Some will only turn if you force them. And
several won't move at all, no matter how hard you try. You must have been given
the wrong key.
This little story is a parable, of
course. The "locks" represent all the passages in the New Testament
where the devil, or Satan, is mentioned. The "key" that happens to
fit many of them is the belief that Satan is an angel who has rebelled against
God, a "fallen angel" as he is often
described.
But there are a number of
"locks" that this particular key definitely will not fit. Here are a
few of them:
1. There was a man in the church at Corinth who had committed fornication. The
members of the church had been tolerating this wickedness, and Paul told them
that they must now take action. He wrote:
"You are to deliver this man to
Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that his
spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus" (1 Corinthians 5:5). Now
try the "fallen-angel key" on that "lock". Would Paul tell
the church to hand over a sinful member to a fallen angel, to destroy his
flesh? And would such an action be likely to lead to the sinner's spirit being
"saved in the day of the Lord Jesus"? The rebellious-angel theory
does not work for this verse. We need a different key.
2. Paul wrote about two other
Christians who had sinned:
Certain persons have made shipwreck
of their faith, among them Hymenaeus and Alexander,
whom / have delivered unto Satan that they may learn not to blaspheme" (1
Timothy 1:19-20). There are two big difficulties here for those who believe
that Satan is a supernatural being. First, why should Paul want to hand over
these erring Christians to a wicked spirit? Would you want to do that to any
member of your church, even if he was a sinner?
Secondly, would a fallen angel
co-operate with Paul by teaching these Christians not to blaspheme? Surely a
wicked spirit would try and help people to blaspheme, not to cure them of
blasphemy! Obviously the fallen-angel key does not work here, either.
3. The church in a town called
Pergamum was being persecuted. The Lord Jesus sent it a message of comfort,
which included this statement: "I know where you dwell, where Satan's
throne is" (Revelation 2:13). How could this be, if Satan is a fallen
angel? Did an evil monster really sit on a throne, as king over the city of
Pergamum? If so, then how did a Christian church ever become established there?
Why didn't the Christians all run away from such a centre of evil?
The Key that Really Fits
Those three passages are not the only
ones where the idea of Satan being a great evil spirit does not fit. We shall
look at some more, shortly. But first we must try the other "key" on
those three "locks", to see whether those passages make sense if we
regard Satan as a parable of human wickedness.
"Delivering to Satan"
The first passage was 1 Corinthians
5:5, where Paul said about the fornicator, "Deliver this man to
Satan". A few verses further on, Paul explained what he meant: "Drive
out the wicked person from among you" (verse 13). The key fits!
"Delivering to Satan" meant excommunication, or putting the sinner
out of the church. He was sent back into the world where he came from, to
the kingdom of wickedness, where "Satan" (that is, sinful human
nature) reigns supreme. This drastic punishment was intended to bring him to
his senses, to move him to repent, so that "his spirit may be saved".
This also explains 1 Timothy 1:20.
Here Paul said he had delivered two sinful Christians to Satan that they might
learn not to blaspheme. They, too, had evidently been excommunicated, because
in 2 Timothy 2:16-17 Paul advised Timothy to avoid them. He must have hoped
that in this case, too, the excommunicated Christians would repent, and thus
"learn not to blaspheme".
Then we looked at Revelation 2:13,
which said that Satan's throne was in the city of Pergamum. This makes sense
when we realise that Pergamum was the capital city of a province of the Roman
Empire. At that time the Roman governor was persecuting the Christians and
putting some of them to death. By these dreadful deeds he showed himself to be
a man full of the wickedness of human nature. Thus he earned the name
"Satan", "The Enemy". And this wicked
ruler's throne really was in the city of Pergamum.
Now we can understand another verse in
the Book of Revelation: "Do not fear what you are about to suffer. Behold,
the devil is about to throw some of you into prison, that you may be
tested" (Revelation 2:10). Which "devil" threw the early Christians
into prison? A fallen angel? Or the wicked Roman government? The answer is
obvious.
We can also make sense of another
puzzling verse now. People who believe in a superhuman devil think that he
glides about the world silently and invisibly. Yet Peter wrote:
"Your adversary the devil prowls
around like a roaring lion, seeking some one to
devour. Resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same experience of
suffering is required of your brotherhood throughout the world" (1 Peter
5:8,9).
Look at the second sentence of that
passage, with its reference to "suffering". Isn't it obvious that
Peter was talking about the cruel rulers of the Roman Empire? These men
savagely persecuted the Christians and threw them to the lions. That, no doubt,
is why Peter likens them to a roaring lion. Paul, incidentally, used a similar
expression about the Roman authorities. When he was delivered from death at
their hands he said, "I was rescued from the lion's mouth" (2 Timothy
4:17).
So it begins to look as if there is no
contradiction between the Old Testament and the New, after all. Already we have
looked at five New Testament passages where the idea of a rebellious angel does
not fit, but where the Old Testament teaching,
that Satan is a
name for sinful human nature, fits perfectly. And we have not
finished yet, not by a long way.
More Problems Solved
With this key in our hands we can now
solve many more problems.
For example, the Lord Jesus Christ
once called Judas "a devil", and once he called Peter
"Satan". He did not say they were possessed by the devil or Satan; he
said that Judas actually was a devil, and addressed Peter himself as Satan
(John 6:70-71; Matthew 16:23). What did the Lord mean? It is not difficult to
grasp Christ's words when we remember that both these disciples were, at the
time, working against him. Judas had begun a course of action that would lead
him to betray his Master. And Peter was at that moment trying to persuade Jesus
to escape from his duty. Thus both these men were acting sinfully when Jesus
rebuked them. They each deserved to be labelled "human sinfulness"
that is, "Satan, devil".
Another interesting passage occurs in
the story of the unfaithful Christian, Ananias. This man decided to cheat the
church, and to tell lies to the Apostle Peter. But Peter was able to expose
Ananias' deceit, because he possessed the Holy Spirit. He said:
"Ananias, why has SATAN filled
your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and to keep back part of the proceeds of
the land? ... How is it that YOU have contrived this deed in your heart?"
(Acts 5:3-4).
Look closely at the two phrases in
italics in that quotation. The first says that Satan was responsible for
Ananias' sin, and the second says that Ananias himself was responsible. If
Satan really was a fallen angel, then these two phrases would contradict each
other.
But now that we have the right key,
there is no contradiction and no difficulty. Since Satan is a symbol of human
wickedness, those two phrases are just different ways of saying the same thing.
Ananias was opposing God: he was behaving as God's enemy, as "The
Enemy", Satan.
Chapter Five - How the Lord Jesus
Conquered the Devil
Jesus had several great battles with
Satan, and he won them all. In this chapter we shall look at these, and see who
this devil that Jesus conquered really was.
The Temptations in the Wilderness
"Jesus, the Son of God ... in
every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sinning" (Hebrews
4:14-15).
The meaning of that passage is quite
plain. Unlike us, Jesus always conquered temptation. He never sinned, not once.
But in every other respect his temptations were exactly like ours. And yet the
detailed accounts of his great temptations in the wilderness seem to show that
these were very unlike ours. At least, they would have been unlike anything
that we have experienced if the devil that tempted Jesus really was a fallen
angel. Read the first eleven verses of Matthew 4 and see this for yourself. The
devil took Jesus to the top of the temple in Jerusalem, and tried to persuade
him to throw himself down.
Then "the devil took him to a
very high mountain, and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and the glory
of them; and he said to him, 'All these will I give you, if you will fall down
and worship me'."
This account is full of difficulties
for those who believe in a supernatural devil. Would the Son of God have been
willing to go climbing up temples and mountains in company with a fallen angel?
Would he have been likely to throw himself down because a wicked monster said
so?
And where is there a mountain from
which one can see "all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of
them"? In any case, would a superhuman devil have been so stupid as to
point to those kingdoms and say, "All these will I give you"? Jesus
knew very well that the kingdoms of this world belong to God, and that no
fallen angel could have the power to give them away. Three times in one chapter
the Old Testament says that God rules in the kingdom of men, and gives it to
whomsoever He chooses (Daniel 4:17,25,32).
But as soon as we accept that the
devil is our fallen human nature, all these problems vanish. As Canon Anthony Deane
and Bishop Charles Gore admitted in their books (quoted in chapter 1 of this
booklet), the story of the Lord's temptation is written in picture-language. It
describes the fight that took place in Jesus Christ's own mind. It is a vivid
account of the same sort of struggle that all human beings experience every
day: a battle with the real Satan, ourselves.
Only with Jesus the battle was far
more intense.
He had just been given the power of
the Holy Spirit, power without limit. He knew that he could now do anything. He
could imagine himself manufacturing food from the stones, jumping off the top
of the temple and landing unharmed, conquering the whole world if he wanted.
Should he use his power to do these
things? "The devil" (that is, Christ's own human instincts) suggested
that it would be wonderful to do so. But he knew that his God-given power was
meant to be used for the good of others, not for his own pleasure. So he
suppressed these typically human desires, saying, "Begone,
Satan!"
Now we can understand yet another passage that has always baffled those Bible
students who believe in the fallen-angel Satan. In Mark 3:27 Jesus claimed that
he had already "bound" Satan. Yet he certainly had not
"bound" any supernatural Satan at that time.
What Jesus had done was to
"bind" the "Satan" of human nature that was inside him. He
did this every day, by conquering every temptation that came to him and thus
living a sinless life.
How Jesus Destroyed the Devil
At the time of his temptation the Lord
Jesus Christ defeated the devil. Throughout his mortal life he kept the devil
"bound". And when he died he actually destroyed the devil. This
verse, which was written about 30 years after he died, tells us so:
"Since the children, as he calls
them, are people of flesh and blood, Jesus himself became like them and shared
their human nature. He did so that through his death he might destroy the
Devil, who has the power over death" (Hebrews 2:14, Today's English
Version).
This passage is full of problems for
those who believe in the fallen-angel devil. Look at the last statement in the
verse first. The devil has the power of death. But we have already seen that
God says nobody besides Himself can take away life. (Deuteronomy 32:39). And
Jesus, long before he died, said that nobody could take his disciples' lives
away from him (John 10:28).
This assures us that no person, apart
from God Himself, ever had the power of death. It would therefore be almost
blasphemous to suggest that a wicked, rebellious angel could have the power of
death. Yet Hebrews 2:14 insists that the devil had that power.
This proves conclusively that the
devil of this verse cannot possibly be a supernatural devil, or, indeed, a person
of any sort.
Sin and Death
But now let us try the key that has
already explained so many difficult passages. There is no person, besides God,
who holds the power of death. But there is one thing that holds it: human
sinfulness. Here are two verses that say so:
"The wages of sin is death"
(Romans 6:23).
"Sin when it is full-grown brings
forth death" (James 1:15).
Without any doubt, therefore, the
devil of Hebrews 2:14, the devil that had the power of death, was human
sinfulness.
Now to return to the first sentence of the verse we were looking at, Hebrews
2:14. Notice how it says that, in order to destroy the devil, Jesus needed to
"share our human nature". This statement presents another
unanswerable question for those who believe in a supernatural devil. Why should
Christ become human, if the thing he wanted to destroy was a mighty evil
spirit? How could any human being hope to defeat such a monster?
Also, take note of this verse's teaching that Jesus died so as to destroy the
devil. But what can a man destroy by dying, except his own human nature, or his
own self? Now that we know the devil is human nature, actually
is that evil thing we call "SELF", or selfishness, all is beautifully
clear. Of course Jesus had to share our human nature. Otherwise, there would
have been no "devil" inside him to be destroyed. Of course he had to
die. Otherwise he would never have completely destroyed "self.
The Power of Human Nature
With the right key in our hands
everything in this verse fits together and makes perfect sense. Self, the
human-nature devil, is too strong for you and me; it has the power of death
over us; it destroys us. But the Lord Jesus Christ was the one and only human
being who conquered every temptation that his human nature could hurl at him.
And he went on doing so, right up to his dying breath.
The night before he died he admitted
to his Father that his human nature dreaded dying on the cross. But he was
determined to obey his Father, rather than his own human desires. He prayed: "Not
my will, but thine, be done" (Luke 22:42).
Had he done his own will and run away
from the cross, the devil of human nature would have destroyed him. But he did
no such thing. Instead, he did his Father's will. He went forward bravely to an
agonising death. And thus he destroyed the devil.
Recap - What We Have Learned
Before going any further it might be
as well to take stock. Let us think back over the earlier chapters and see
where they brought us.
Chapter 1 explained that there have
long been two points of view about the devil. Many have believed that it is a
fallen angel; others have believed that the devil is the Bible's way of
referring to human wickedness.
In chapter 2 we looked at every
mention of Satan in the Hebrew Old Testament. (The word "devil" is
not found in the English Old Testaments at all, though the Greek word diabolos does occur in the Greek Old Testament versions of
Job 1 and Zechariah 3) Clearly the Old Testament Satan looks much more like a
human-nature devil than a supernatural devil.
Chapter 3 began by giving some
historical evidence about the belief of the ancient Jews. They regarded Satan
as what you might call a parable of human sinfulness. Then it showed how the
other view of Satan began among the ancient Persians. After this it quoted many
Old Testament passages which make it impossible to believe in a fallen angel;
these Scriptures clearly show that God and His obedient angels are the only
spirit beings in the whole universe.
In chapters 4 and 5 we looked at a
number of the New Testament passages where the devil or Satan are mentioned. It
was clear that every one of these is very difficult to understand for those who
believe in a superhuman devil. But they all make perfect sense if you hold the
Old Testament doctrine, that Satan is human wickedness.
There was not enough space to look at every mention of the devil in the New
Testament. Now that you have the key to the subject you can examine the others
for yourself. You will find that they all fit in well with the doctrine of a
human-nature devil.
The only two that might cause any
great difficulty are Luke 10:18 and Revelation 12:1-10. These are dealt with in
the Appendix at the end of this booklet. (So are four other difficult passages
which have a bearing on this subject, although they do not mention the devil or
Satan by name.)
Another Problem
Now we must go on to look at one of
the most difficult questions in all the Bible. This is the problem of those
unhappy people we read about in the Gospels, who were said to be
"possessed with an evil spirit", or, "possessed with a
demon".
Chapter Six - The Problem of Demon
Possession
I have already admitted that the New
Testament references to demons are not easy to understand. But let us be clear
about one thing. This is not only a problem to those of us who believe in the
human-nature devil. It is just as big a difficulty to those who believe in a
supernatural devil.
The first three Gospels describe a
number of incidents of which this is typical:
"A man from the crowd cried,
'Teacher, I beg you to look upon my son, for he is my only child; and behold, a
spirit seizes him, and he suddenly cries out; it convulses him till he foams,
and shatters him, and will hardly leave him ...' Jesus answered, '... Bring
your son here.' While he was coming, the demon tore him and convulsed him. But
Jesus rebuked the unclean spirit and healed the boy" (Luke 9:38-42).
Descriptions of Illness
This describes the curing of a very
sick boy. Matthew's account of the same event (17:14-18) shows that the lad was
suffering from the illness called epilepsy, or fits. All the other cases of
demon possession in the New Testament involved people who were either
epileptic, mad, deaf, dumb, blind, or paralysed. The killer diseases like
leprosy and fever are never blamed on demon possession in the Bible.
If we assume that God intends us to
take these stories of demon possession at their face value, we are left with
three extremely difficult questions.
First, are we to assume that the Bible
has been proved wrong by modern medical science? In the time of Christ most
people (though not all) believed that certain illnesses were caused by demon
possession. This is especially true of epilepsy, which was once called,
"the sacred illness".
But nowadays doctors are aware that
this is not so. They know the real cause of these diseases and they know how to
treat them. Every year doctors successfully treat thousands of cases of
epilepsy with drugs. But what people call "exorcism" (the
attempt to cure diseases by casting out demons)
is regarded in
the medical profession as a bad joke. Doctors know that on the very, very rare
occasions when exorcism seems to work, it is only a case of "mind over
matter".
Consequently nearly all doctors are
convinced that primitive people long ago were mistaken. Many of the ancient
Greeks believed in demon possession, but nowadays we know that they were wrong:
there is no such thing. Are we to believe that the inspired writers of the New
Testament made the same mistake? Surely not.
The second question is equally
worrying. The dictionary tells us that "demon" was a word the Greeks
used to describe many of the false gods they worshipped. The apostle Paul, like
all the other New Testament writers, wrote in Greek, and in the following two
verses he used the word "demon" twice to mean a heathen god:
"What do I imply then? That food
offered to idols is anything, or that an idol is anything? No, I imply that
what pagans sacrifice they offer to demons and not to God. I do not want you to
be partners with demons" (1 Corinthians 10:19-20).
If the cases of demon possession
described in the Gospels were real, then it would seem that demons were real, until
we pause to think what this would mean. As we have already seen, in Greek, the
language of the New Testament, the word "demon" actually means
"a god". So if (and it is a very big if) the early
Greek-speaking Christians thought that demons were real, this would imply that
they believed false gods were real, also.
The third point is that God Himself
claims responsibility for deafness, dumbness and blindness - all complaints
that are blamed on demons in the New Testament. He said to Moses:
"Who has made man's mouth? Who
makes him dumb, or deaf, or seeing, or blind? Is it not I, the Lord?"
(Exodus 4:11).
It is hard to believe that God would
ever have said such a thing if it is really demons that make men dumb, or deaf,
or blind.
For these three reasons a great many
Bible-believing Christians refuse to believe that God wishes us to take the
demon possession stories of the New Testament literally. Even those who believe
in a supernatural devil often feel like this. Like the Christadelphians, they
consider that there must be a better explanation of the New Testament's
references to demons and unclean spirits.
Looking for a Better Explanation
One thing is quite certain. Not
everybody in the Greek-speaking world at the time of Jesus believed in demon
possession.
The most famous doctor that ever lived
was a Greek called Hippocrates. He lived in the fifth century before Christ,
and even after 2,400 years our own doctors still have a very great respect for
him. Some of his books have been preserved. One of these is a treatise on
epilepsy. In this he said that the popular belief in demon possession was not
true. Epilepsy must be treated by medical care, said Hippocrates, just like
every other disease.7
For about the next 600 years, until the second century after Christ, all the
best educated Greek doctors were taught this.8 Some of this teaching must have
filtered down to the common people, although how many of them believed it we do
not know, because neither history nor the Bible tells us.
What the Bible does tell us is that
the Jewish religious teachers called Pharisees believed in both a supernatural
devil and demon possession. Matthew 12:27 shows that they even practised
exorcism.
But this does not prove that demons
were real. Far from it. The Pharisees were very frequently in the wrong, and in
the end they helped to crucify the Lord Jesus Christ. On one occasion he said
to them:
"For the sake of your tradition,
you have made void the word of God" (Matthew 15:6).
The Pharisees' belief in demons may
help to explain why there are so many references to demon possession in the
Gospels. But we must always remember that many of the Pharisees' beliefs were
mistaken.
It would be extremely interesting to
know exactly what the writers of the New Testament believed about demons. Alas,
they have not seen fit to tell us. All they have done is to drop a number of
little hints, and then leave us to draw our own conclusions. It will be
interesting to see what we can learn from those hints.
A Careful Look at the Gospels
The following verses from Matthew's
Gospel have something very useful to tell us about demon possession, if we
study them carefully.
"That evening they brought to him
many who were possessed with demons; and he cast out the spirits with a word,
and healed all who were sick. This was to fulfil what was spoken by the prophet
Isaiah, 'He took our infirmities and bore our diseases'." (Matthew 8:16,17).
The words that Matthew quotes are
taken from Isaiah, chapter 53. Both the Old Testament prophecy and its
fulfilment in Jesus are in two parts, thus:
The Prophecy (Isaiah, quoted by
Matthew)
1. He would take our infirmities
2. He would bear our diseases
The Fulfilment (reported by Matthew)
1. He cast out demons, or
spirits
2. He healed the sick.
Matthew evidently regarded Isaiah's
words as referring to two kinds of illnesses: (1) infirmity, and (2) disease.
His own names for these were: (1) demon possession, and (2) sickness.
What Matthew called "demon
possession", Isaiah called "infirmity".
And Matthew himself says that the words in Isaiah and his own words are
describing the same event.
It certainly looks as if, to Matthew,
the language of demon possession was just a way to describe a kind of illness.
Now look at this passage from another Gospel.
"There met him out of the tombs a
man with an unclean spirit... He (Jesus) had said to him, 'Come out of the man,
you unclean spirit!'... And the unclean spirits came out, and entered the
swine; and the herd, numbering about two thousand, rushed down the steep bank
into the sea" (Mark 5:2-13).
Notice the words in italics. Mark begins by saying that the man was possessed
by one spirit. Jesus thought so, too; he commanded that one spirit to come out
of the man. But in fact, as the end of the story shows, the man had been
possessed by a great many spirits.
If we try to take this story literally
we are bound to end up in a hopeless tangle. Either there was one spirit, as
Mark says at the start, and as the Lord Jesus also said, or there were lots of
spirits, as Mark says at the end. How can we explain this contradiction, if we
believe the spirits were real beings? Obviously, we cannot.
But if Mark was only using the
expression, "possessed with an unclean spirit", as just another way
of saying, "ill", there is no contradiction and no problem. In that
case, "possessed with a whole legion [a lot] of spirits" would simply
mean, "very, very ill".
Perhaps you think that this solves one
problem, but creates an even bigger problem. You may find it hard to believe
that the Gospel writers could speak about demon possession if they did not
really believe in demons.
Picture-Language
If you feel like that, then look at it
this way. We use words only to convey ideas. It is the ideas that are
important, not the words themselves. Often we use words in what looks like the
wrong way, but this does not matter so long as we convey our meaning to the
other person.
For an example of this, look back to
page 8 of this booklet, where Venus was referred to as a star. If I had been
writing a scientific paper, then that would have been a dreadful blunder. Venus
is not a star, it is a planet, which is a very different thing.
But that did not matter. You grasped
my meaning perfectly, despite the loose use of a word. It probably never
occurred to you to say to yourself, "This poor fellow doesn't know the
difference between a star and a planet." And if you had thought that, you
would in fact have been wrong. The poor fellow knew very well that a star is not
a planet, but it suited his purpose to ignore that fact.
Here is another example. Today lawyers
generally refer to floods, hurricanes and other natural disasters as "Acts
of God". But this does not mean that all lawyers believe in God! They are
merely using a convenient phrase that most people understand, even though some
may be misled by it.
Similarly, it is likely that many Jews
spoke of demon possession without actually believing in the existence of
demons. Speaking of demons was a vivid piece of picture-language to describe
some very nasty types of illness. All Jews loved to speak in parables, and this
way of describing sickness would have sounded much more natural to them than it
does to us.
Two Ways of Saying It
Now for some more evidence to support
this point of view. Consider the following account of a miracle: "A man
came up to him [Jesus] and kneeling before him said, 'Lord, have mercy on my
son, for he is an epileptic and he suffers terribly; for often he falls into
the fire, and often into the water. And I brought him to your disciples, and
they could not heal him '." (Matthew 17:14-16).
Matthew's plain words give us a very
clear picture. The boy was ill and needed healing. But then Matthew goes on to
say: "And Jesus rebuked him, and the demon came out of him, and the boy
was cured instantly" (verse 18). This really is a surprise ending. What started as a simple story of an illness turns
out to be a tale of demon possession in the finish.
Demons and Illnesses
How can we understand this apparent
confusion on Matthew's part? There seems to be only one reasonable explanation.
Matthew knew that mysterious illnesses (such as the epilepsy from which this
boy suffered) and "demon possession" were really one and the same
thing. So it was a natural thing for him to slip from one form of language to
the other.
Matthew does much the same thing in
another chapter: "Then a blind and dumb demoniac [the word means 'person
possessed with a demon'] was brought to him, and he healed him" (Matthew
12:22).
So does Luke: "In that hour he
cured many of diseases and plagues and evil spirits" (Luke 7:21).
The normal words that go with "demons" and "evil spirits"
are "cast out", while the words "cured" and
"healed" go with "illnesses". But here the two separate
ideas are interwoven. Matthew tells of a demoniac who was healed, and Luke
tells of people who were cured of evil spirits. Once more the Gospel writers
are giving us some clues as to what their real beliefs must have been. Evidently
to them demon possession was only another name for illness.
Why Did They Do It?
One last question remains. Why did
Jesus and his apostles describe illness in this strange way, when it would have
been a lot simpler just to call it illness? Unfortunately we have no way of
answering this question without guessing. We really do not know why, because
God has not seen fit to tell us.
As a matter of fact the Lord Jesus did
many things that we cannot explain. Once, when he needed a certain sum of
money, he sent Peter to the lake to catch a fish, and a coin of just the right
size was found in that fish's mouth (Matthew 17:27). Why did Jesus choose that
extraordinary way to obtain money? We do not know.
Rebuking the Wind and Waves
When he calmed a storm on the lake he
actually talked to it. He "rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, 'Peace!
Be still!'" (Mark 4:39). Similarly, when he cured one woman of a serious
illness, he "rebuked the fever, and it left her". Why did Jesus talk
to the wind, the sea and the fever? Were they alive and able to hear what he
said? Obviously not. We cannot tell why Jesus chose to talk like that to the
storm and the fever. But, whatever the reason, we can be sure that it was not
because the wind and the water and the fever were living beings.
It is like that with demon possession.
We do not know why Jesus and his disciples sometimes spoke as if demons were
real. But, whatever the reason, we can be sure that it was not because demons
were living beings.
As we have seen, the Bible provides
plenty of evidence that there are no fallen angels, and no spirit beings in
rebellion against God. Nothing can alter that fact, even though we may not
understand the reason for the use of "demon language" in the New
Testament.
Chapter Seven - Where Sin Really Comes From
So far the message of this booklet has
been rather negative. That has been unavoidable. Because so many people believe
that the devil is a fallen angel it was necessary to begin by showing that this
is not taught in the Bible. This chapter will be more positive. Now it is time
to show what the Bible really does teach about the origin of sin. In other
words, the previous chapters have shown what the devil is not; this chapter
will show what the devil really is.
Plain Speaking
As we have seen, the writers of the
Bible often used Satan as a parable of human sin. But they did not always speak
in parables. Sometimes they spoke in very plain language about the source of
sin. Here are four examples: "The heart [that is, "human
nature", as we call it today] is deceitful above all things, and
desperately corrupt; who can understand it?" (Jeremiah 17:9).
"Out of the heart come evil
thoughts, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, slander. These
are what defile a man" (Matthew 15:19-20).
"Let no one say when he is
tempted, I am tempted by God'; for God cannot be tempted with evil and He
Himself tempts no one; but each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed
by his own desire. Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin"
(James 1:13-15).
"What causes wars, and what
causes fightings among you? Is it not your passions
that are at war in your members? You desire and do not have; so you kill"
(James 4:1,2).
The message of these four Bible quotations is painfully clear. God says to us,
in effect: don't blame somebody else when you sin. Don't blame a supernatural
devil, or any other being. Blame yourself. That is where temptation and sin
come from - from right inside your own heart.
Paul's Teaching in Romans
If you still have any doubt about
this, take a Bible and read straight through the first eight chapters of Paul's
Letter to the Romans. Here we have a wonderful account of the truth about sin
and death, salvation and everlasting life. It is quite the most detailed explanation
of these things in the whole Bible. Yet in all these eight chapters there is
not one mention of the devil or of Satan.
Those who believe in a supernatural
devil are baffled by this fact. If a fallen angel is the real cause of human
sin, how could Paul write such a detailed explanation of sin and its origin
without even mentioning this evil spirit? They cannot answer this question. One
thing must be perfectly clear to anyone who reads Romans with an open mind:
Paul did not believe that a fallen angel was responsible for the sinfulness of
the human race.
In Chapter 1 he describes the
wickedness of mankind. But he does not blame this on some Satanic being,
instead Paul puts it down to "the lusts of their [men's] hearts"
(verse 24). Similarly, in Chapter 2, he tells his readers that their sin comes
from "your hard and impenitent heart" (verse 5). Then in Chapter 3 he
blames "our wickedness" (verse 5). He makes it clear that we have no
excuse for this (verse 19). We have nobody to blame but ourselves. Chapter 5 is
the plainest chapter of all. This explains how sin and death came into the
world. It was not through a wicked spirit, but:
"Sin came into the world through
one man [Adam] and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because
all men sinned" (verse 12).
In Chapter 6 Paul explains that a
Christian must think of himself as a "slave of righteousness" (verse
18). Before we become true Christians we are slaves of another master. Who is
this other master? If Paul had believed in a superhuman devil, he would surely
have said, "You were once slaves of the devil." But he said no such
thing.
These are Pauls words:
"Let not SIN therefore reign in
your mortal bodies ... Do not yield your members to SIN ... You are slaves of
the one whom you obey, either of SIN, which leads to death, or of obedience,
which leads to righteousness ... You were slaves of SIN ... But now that you
have been set free from SIN and have become slaves of God ..." (verses 12,13,16,20,22).
Sin. Plain human wickedness. That is
our real enemy, and, unless we follow the Lord Jesus, sin is our evil
master. So there is no point in
looking outside ourselves, for an imaginary evil-spirit enemy. We must look
inside ourselves, where the real enemy is. This is Paul's teaching in Chapters
7 and 8 also:
"I delight in the law of God, in
my inmost self, but I see in my members [another name for his own human nature]
another law at war with the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of
sin which dwells in my members" (Romans 7:22,23).
If you live according to the flesh [the
flesh is yet another name for sinful human nature] you will die, but if by the
Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body you will live" (Romans
8:13).
Why Is the Bible Hard to Understand?
This is a big problem to many people.
God wants people to understand the Bible. Why, then, does He not make it so
plain that everybody who reads it draws the same conclusions? Why do some
passages speak of Satan in such a way that many people sincerely, but
mistakenly, think Satan is a fallen angel?
Before we tackle this question, one
thing needs to be understood. This sort of problem arises in connection with
other doctrines besides that of the devil.
Many people misunderstand a number of
important Bible teachings. For example many people believe that the soul is
immortal, although the Bible teaches the opposite. [If
you have any doubts about this, write to the address on the back cover for a
free booklet about life after death].
The disciples of Jesus were worried about a similar problem: "Why do you
speak to them [the unbelieving masses] in parables?" they asked their
Master. He replied:
"To you it has been given to know
the secrets of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given. For to
him who has will more be given, and he will have abundance; but from him who
has not, even what he has will be taken away. This is why I speak to them in
parables, because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do
they understand ... But blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your ears, for
they hear" (Matthew 13:10-16).
Anybody who wished could become a
disciple. But it meant hard work. The disciples stayed with Jesus long after
the crowds had gone home for their suppers.
They found his teaching hard to
understand. But they kept on studying with the Master, and eventually they
found that they could see what he really meant. To use his phrase, they
developed eyes that could see and ears that could hear. The masses were not so
diligent. They came when they felt like it; they heard a few things, and then
drifted away. The result was that they completely failed to understand the
Lord's teaching. In his words,
"Seeing they do not see, and
hearing they do not hear."
It is much the same today. To
understand the Bible one needs to work at it. But it is well worth the effort.
This is why every faithful member of the Christadelphians tries to read at
least a chapter or two every day. If we only look at the Bible once in a while - say,
on Sundays, or whenever we go to a church service
- we cannot expect
to understand it properly.
Bible Language
The men who wrote the Bible were
nearly all Hebrews (or, as we would call them nowadays, Jews). Most of them
wrote in the Hebrew language, and the others thought in a Hebrew way. Even
after it has been translated into our own language, we can still recognise the
Hebrew way of speaking in our Bible. The Hebrews loved parables. In one form or
another, parable-language is found on practically every page of the Bible.
Unless we realise this we shall often be led astray.
For instance, in Matthew 6:24 Jesus
said, "No one can serve two masters ... You cannot serve God and
Mammon." You might think from this that Mammon was the name of a heathen
idol, which some men worshipped instead of worshipping God. But you would be
mistaken. "Mammon" was just a Jewish word meaning "money". In
these few words Jesus gave us a kind of parable. It was as if he had said,
"Money is an idol to many people. Instead of worshipping my Father, they
worship the great god Money. Let them beware!" His Hebrew listeners were
in no danger of believing that there really was a wicked spirit called Mammon,
even though modern readers could easily misunderstand Jesus if they were not
careful.
Some parables run right through the
Bible, from one book to another. One of these is the Parable of God and His
Wife. In this, the nation of Israel (in the Old Testament) or the Christian
church (in the New Testament) is likened to a woman whose husband is God or
Christ.
So the parable we have been studying
in this booklet is not unique. The Parable of God and His Enemy (Satan, or
wicked human nature) occurs in about the same number of Bible books, and is
mentioned about the same number of times, as the Parable of God and His Wife.
A careful Bible reader will not take
either of these parables literally. He will not imagine that God's
"wife" is a woman, even though she is given female names like, "Aholah", and "Hephzibah". He will not assume
that God's "enemy" is a fallen angel, even though he is given the
ugly name, "Satan". And, since every parable is meant to teach us
something, he will look for the important lesson in this great parable of God
and His Enemy.
Bringing Good out of Bad
As a first step towards grasping this
lesson, we must note that God has a wonderful way of bringing something good
out of a human disaster.
Jesus Christ was the King of the Jews. But they did not recognise him. The Jews
murdered their King.
Was this a tragedy, or a good thing? It was both. Any murder is a terrible
event, but this murder was different from any other tragedy. God used it to
provide a Sacrifice for the sins of the world. In much the same way, God can
even use a false statement as a foundation for a true one! If you find this
hard to believe, consider the story told by Jesus that we call the Parable of
the Pounds (Luke 19:12-27).
In this parable a nobleman (Jesus) gave ten servants a pound each, and told
them to trade for him while he was away. Some did so, but one was lazy and did
not. This was his excuse:
"Lord, here is your pound, which
I kept laid away in a napkin; for I was afraid of you, because you are a severe
man; you take up what you did not lay down, and reap what you did not sow" (Luke 19:20,21).
In these words the lazy servant
slandered his master. The Lord Jesus is not "a severe man"; he does
not "take up what he does not lay down", or "reap what he does
not sow". But the Lord did not deny the slander. He replied: "I will
condemn you out of your own mouth, you wicked servant! You knew that I was a
severe man, taking up what I did not lay down and reaping what I did not sow?
Why then did you not put my money into the bank, and at my coming I should have
collected it with interest?" (Luke 19:22-23). We can learn a great deal
from the Lord's answer. His opening words, "I will condemn you out of your
own mouth", are very significant. This is another way of saying, "I
will accept what you say (even though it isn't true) and use it to show how
wrongly you have behaved".
The same principle is used several
times in the Lord's dealings with men. It applies especially to the New
Testament doctrine of the devil. The Pharisees had taken the Old Testament name
of Satan, and had corrupted it by applying it to the heathen doctrine of a
"devil", a god of evil. Jesus did not correct their
error. Although the Pharisees were using the word "devil" as part of
their false teaching, Jesus was able to make good use of the word in his own
teaching. But it is clear that he used it in a different way. By taking up the
Pharisees' word, devil, and using it as a parable of human sinfulness, just as
the Old Testament had done with the word Satan, Jesus made his own teaching
more effective. It was another application of the method he used in his Parable
of the Pounds: "I will condemn you out of your own mouth."
Learning a Hard Lesson
His skilful teaching can help us
today, if we will let it. The Bible picture of the devil is horrible. When we
first read of this evil creature called Satan we are revolted by it. Then, if
we read our Bibles very carefully, light dawns upon us. "Ugh, that
dreadful thing is a parable of human nature. That's what I, myself, must be
like inside!"
Without this wonderful parable to help
us, it would be extremely hard for us to realise in our hearts just how wicked
we are. This hideous picture of our natural selves as God's Enemy, Satan, is
God's way of bringing home the truth to us with shattering force. If that does
not teach us humility and the need for salvation through the Lord Jesus Christ,
then surely nothing else will.
Chapter Eight - Conclusions
It will be useful to look back and see
what we have learnt.
First of all, we saw that the doctrine
of a fallen-angel devil is not taught in the Old Testament. In Old Testament
times the Jews did not believe in a supernatural devil. The Persians invented
this belief (or something very close to it), and at first the Jews all rejected
it. But by the time of Jesus Christ many Jews had come to believe that the
devil was a rebellious angel. Among them were those enemies of Jesus, the Pharisees.
The writers of the New Testament, however, dropped many hints that they did not
believe this Persian doctrine. To them, and to the Lord Jesus, "Satan, the
devil" was a parable of wicked human nature. In short, in the whole Bible
there is nothing that clearly teaches the doctrine of a superhuman Satan, and
there is very much that contradicts it.
This conclusion leads to an
interesting question. If the idea of a supernatural devil is not part of Bible
teaching, why is it such a popular doctrine? Millions of people cling very
strongly to their belief in this devil, and talking to them you sometimes get
the impression that they actually enjoy believing in him. Why? Some
people even go so far as to worship Satan. In fact, devil worship is said to be
the fastest growing religion in the world today. Again: why is this?
There is a very simple answer to these
questions. This may not be the only reason for the popularity of this false
belief, but it undoubtedly is an important one: human beings always have tried
to shift the blame for their sins. When the very first man was caught
committing the world's first sin, he said to God: "The woman whom you gave
to be with me, she gave me the fruit of the tree, and I ate" (Genesis
3:12). But the woman would not accept the blame, either. She defended herself:
"The serpent beguiled me, and I ate" Genesis 3:14). Both these early
sinners used the same excuse, "I wasn't altogether to blame, because
somebody else tempted me!" All men and women are the children of this
first sinful pair. Down through the ages, millions of us have echoed their
excuses. "Please don't altogether blame me, Lord, remember
the evil being who tempted me!"
It is comforting to defend ourselves
like that. It is a reassuring thought that there is always at least one
creature who is much more wicked than oneself. These
are pleasant beliefs to hold. And that is why there have always been millions
of people holding them. But they are false comfort. The Bible shows that there
is no supernatural being who tempts us. God sees only one person to blame for
our sins: ourselves. This is the real devil, your own inner self. Face up to
him, and with Christ's help defeat him, and you will be on the road to
everlasting life.
ALAN HAYWARD
Appendix - Some Problem Passages
1. Satan's Fall
from Heaven
There is not a single place where the
Bible says that Satan is a wicked angel who was expelled from heaven.
Nevertheless there are two New Testament passages that do speak of Satan
falling from heaven. We must now look at these, to see how they fit into the
Bible's use of Satan as a parable of human wickedness.
The first occurs in Luke 10:18, where the Lord Jesus Christ said, "I saw
Satan fall like lightning from heaven". What did he mean by that?
It is not possible to answer that
question correctly without first answering two other questions. When did Jesus
say it? And to whom was he speaking?
It might be a good idea to turn up the
tenth chapter of Luke and read it for yourself. Then you will see that this was
the first thing he said to his seventy disciples when they returned from their
first preaching tour, full of excitement. He had sent them out to do two
things: to heal the sick, and to preach the gospel (verse 9). They came back
rejoicing, and saying, "Lord, even the demons are subject to us in your
name!" As we saw in Chapter 6, this was just their way of saying,
"Lord, you were right. We have been able to cure even the most horrible
kinds of illness!" Jesus replied that he saw Satan fall from heaven. Obviously
he was referring to what the disciples had just said, not
to something that had happened thousands of years before. It was evidently when
the seventy "cast out demons" (that is, cured illnesses) that Jesus
"saw Satan fall from heaven".
It is not difficult to see what Jesus probably meant. Illness and death are the
consequences of human sinfulness. The big problem was therefore to overcome
sin. After that, the conquest of illness was relatively easy. So there could
have been no miracles of healing until Jesus had shown that he could conquer
human sin in his own life (see Chapter 5). In other words, when the disciples
"cast out demons" (healed the sick) this was proof to the world that
"Satan" (human sinfulness) was being defeated, for the first time in
history. In poetical language, Satan was falling like lightning from heaven.
2. The Great Red Dragon
The other reference to Satan falling
from heaven is this:
"And another portent appeared in
heaven; behold, a great red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns, and seven
diadems [crowns] upon his heads. His tail swept down a third of the stars of
heaven, and cast them to the earth ... Now war arose in heaven, Michael and his
angels fighting against the dragon; and the dragon and his angels fought, but
they were defeated and there was no longer any place for them in heaven. And
the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the Devil
and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world he was thrown down to the earth, and
his angels were thrown down with him. And I heard a loud voice in heaven,
saying, 'Now the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the
authority of His Christ have come'." (Revelation 12:3-10).
This is a difficult passage to
understand. But one thing is very clear. It does not teach that Satan is a
wicked angel who rebelled against God and was expelled from heaven, thousands
of years ago. There are three reasons why we may be quite sure of this.
First, the Book of Revelation is a
book of visions. These visions are written in picture-language: they are like
vivid and unearthly parables. They all have a meaning, but we can only get at
that meaning by interpreting the pictures. This dragon called Satan represents
something. So do all the other features of this parable-vision his
seven heads with crowns on, his ten horns, his tail catching hold of the stars,
his angels, heaven all these represent something. It would be
foolish to try and understand this vision as a literal story. Who ever heard of
a fallen angel with seven heads and ten horns.
Secondly, the Book of Revelation is
not a history book. Its very first sentence says that
it was given to show us "what must soon take place". It tells us
about the future, not the past.
Thirdly, look at the last sentence of the
passage quoted above. It says that, as a consequence of the dragon's downfall,
people will rejoice because God's kingdom has come. This confirms that the
event described in this vision must be still future, since we know that God's
kingdom has not come yet - that is why God's children still pray to Him,
"Thy kingdom come".
Thus we may not be able to say exactly
what the devil-dragon of Revelation 12 represents. But at least we know that he
represents a power (some kind of human power) that will soon be destroyed to
make way for the worldwide kingdom of God. We may be sure that it is a human
power, because savage animals are always used in Bible prophecy to represent
armies and kingdoms (see Daniel 7:17, for instance) and are never used to
represent supernatural powers.
3. Test the Spirits
"Beloved, do not believe every
spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are of God; for many false
prophets have gone out into the world. By this you know the Spirit of God:
every spirit which confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God,
and every spirit which does not confess Jesus is not of God" (1 John
4:1-3).
Some people quote this passage as
evidence that there are two kinds of spirit beings: "spirits of God"
(angels), and "spirits not of God" (evil spirits). But this is
obviously not what this passage means. The end of the first sentence shows that
"spirits not of God" are actually false prophets.
Then why does John call these men
"spirits"? Simply because they were claiming to be prophets. True
prophets spoke by inspiration of the Spirit of God (see 2 Peter 1:21) and false
prophets claimed to speak by inspiration of the Spirit.
Various miraculous powers, or
"gifts" as the New Testament calls them, were given to some Christians
in the first century. Paul indicated that one of these gifts was the ability to
tell which men were true prophets and which were false prophets. He called it
"the ability to distinguish between spirits" (1 Corinthians 12:10).
[This subject is dealt with in depth in the booklet, The Gifts of the Spirit,
available from the address on the back cover].
So "test the spirits" means this: When a man comes to you and claims
to speak by inspiration of God's Spirit, don't just accept his claim. Examine
him carefully, to see whether he really is speaking by the miraculous power of
God's Spirit, or whether he is just an impostor, a false prophet.
4. Spirits in Prison
"For Christ also died for sins
... being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit; by which he
went and preached to the spirits in prison, who formerly did not obey, when
God's patience waited in the days of Noah" (1 Peter 3:18-20).
The words printed in italics are
sometimes quoted on their own, by people who believe that the spirits in prison
are demons who have been locked up by God, and that Christ once went and
preached to them. But by reading the whole sentence we can easily see that this
is not what the verse says. It says that the spirits in prison were those who
did not obey in the time of Noah. That is, they were the wicked men and women
who were drowned in the Flood.
Why are they called spirits? We have
just seen in the previous section that people who possess, or claim to possess,
the Spirit of God, are called spirits. God said of the people of Noah's day,
"My spirit shall not abide in man for ever, for he is flesh" (Genesis
6:3). This is probably Peter's reason for calling these people spirits.
How could Christ be said to have
preached to the wicked people of Noah's day? Only in the sense in which Peter
had already used a similar expression, two chapters earlier. He said that the
Spirit of Christ was within the prophets of old, who predicted the coming of
Christ long before it took place (1 Peter 1:10).
Noah seems to have been a prophet. In
another chapter Peter calls Noah "a herald [preacher] of
righteousness" (2 Peter 2:5). So it seems that, in Peter's own language,
the Spirit of Christ must have been in Noah when he preached the way of
salvation to his neighbours.
This idea fits in well with the
passage in question, which does not say that Christ preached to these people
personally. It says he preached to them "by the spirit". (The actual
words, as quoted above, are "... the spirit, by which he went and preached
...") There is an interesting parallel in 1 Corinthians 5:3 and 4, where
Paul speaks of his written message as himself "present in spirit",
and as "my spirit".
5. The Angels that Sinned
Here are two related passages which
are best studied together:
"For if God did not spare the
angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to pits of
nether gloom to be kept until the judgment..." (2 Peter 2:4).
"The angels that did not keep
their own position but left their proper dwelling have been kept by Him [God]
in eternal chains in the nether gloom until the judgment of the great day"
(Jude 6).
Those who believe that the devil and
demons are rebel angels often quote these two verses to justify their views.
But a thoughtful look at both passages shows that they do not support such
ideas. These angels that Peter and Jude mention,
whoever they may
be, are not free to tempt men or possess their
bodies. They are safely chained up until the Day of Judgment.
5A. [original text in first edition]
In fact they are not "angels" in the usual sense of the
word, at all. They are sinful men. There are three good reasons for saying
this.
To begin with, the Bible tells us plainly that the angels always do
God's will; they can neither sin nor die" (Matthew 6:10; 18:10; Luke 20:36).
Also, the term "angel" is sometimes applied to ordinary
men, when they are given work to do for God. In such places the Hebrew and
Greek words for "angel" are translated "messenger" in the
English Bible. (For examples of this, see Malachi 3:1 and Matthew 11:10, where
John the Baptist is called an "angel" in both the Hebrew Bible and
the Greek Bible.)
If any doubt remains, turn up 2 Peter 2:4 and Jude 6 in your own
Bible and read a few verses before and after them. In both cases these sinful
"angels" are mentioned in a list of sinful men and women mentioned in
the Old Testament. Peter introduces his list by saying that "false
prophets also arose among the people" (2 Peter 2:1).
Who were these angels, or messengers, that sinned? We cannot be
certain, but Peter and Jude were probably referring to the Jewish leaders Korah, Dathan and Abiram. (Korah is mentioned by
name in verse 11 of Jude.) These men rebelled against God, and the earth opened
and swallowed them up; in other words, they were "cast into hell".
[In the Bible several different Hebrew and Greek words are translated
"hell". This one means "a place of darkness under the
earth". Hell is not a place of torture. Write to the address on the back
cover if you would like a free booklet explaining what the Bible really teaches
about hell.]
5B [new text used in reprint edition]
The historical background to these
verses is complex, and to understand it fully demand some knowledge of a Jewish
myths popular in Peter and Judes day. There was a mythical story about 200
angels who fell from heaven to the earth shortly before the flood and married
with human woman.
But, first, what is more important
than the details of the myth are what is said above: Peter and Judas said the
angel is "the eternal chains". Therefore, even if the story was true,
which it is not, such angels are no threat to men and women and cannot be used
to prove the existence of the devil. In fact these verses are no evidence for
the devil. Note that the original text of 2 Peter uses "if, which is a
supposition to state: "Even if angels sinned, then God has locked them
away... ... therefore even if this Jewish myth is true there is nothing to fear.
Such a hypothetical argument is no
evidence for fallen angels. In fact the context shows that Peter and Jude do
not believe this myth:
2Pe.2:1-2 warns of false teachers in
the church.
2Pe.2:3 introduces the angels that
sinned story as deceptive words
2Pe.2:10 says that the false teachers slander
heavenly beings
2Pe.2:12 says that the false teachers slander
what they do not understand
Now if Peter says that the false teachers are spreading deceptive
words and slandering
heavenly beings, then that means that the accusations they made against
heavenly beings were lies.
Logically if the false teachers said
angels sinned, and Peter says that is slander, then that is solid proof that angels
do not sin.
This myth about the 200 angels was
very popular among Jews of Peter and Judes day, but just because many Jews
believed it does not make it true. Paul in Titus 1:14 warns Titus to avoid
Jewish myths. It appears that Christ had also heard this
myth about angels, sons of God, marrying and sinning, because in
Luke 20:35-36 and Mark 12:25 Jesus condemns this story. Jesus says that in the
resurrection men and women will not marry because they will be sons of God,
equal to the angels, and angels do not marry. If Jesus says that angels do not
marry, that supports Peters view that the people who promoted
this story were slandering heavenly beings.
Finally Hebrews 1:14 shows that all angels are ministering servants, not some
angels - so the author of Hebrews denies this myth too.
[A more detailed analysis of this
Jewish myth and Peter and Judes opposition to it can be found in a
separate booklet]
6. Spiritual Hosts of Wickedness
"Put on the whole armour of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the
devil. For we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the
principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present
darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly
places" (Ephesians 6:11,12).
The first thing to notice about this
passage is that it is written in parable-language. In fact, the whole section
of Ephesians in which it occurs (chapter 6, verses 10 to 17) is a kind of
parable. In it the Christian is likened to a soldier, wearing armour and
carrying weapons.
His "breastplate" is
righteousness, and his "girdle" is truth. His "shoes"
represent the equipment of the gospel, his "shield" is faith, his
"helmet" salvation, and his "sword" the Word of God. To
remind his readers that the Christian's enemies in this parable are not actual
soldiers, Paul says that "we are not contending against flesh and
blood". He then names the enemies: (1) principalities, powers and world
rulers; (2) spiritual hosts of wickedness.
It helps us to see what these two
kinds of enemies were if we look at Paul's other warning to the Ephesians. We
read in the Acts of the Apostles how Paul told the elders of the church at
Ephesus to beware of two dangers: "Take heed to yourselves and to all the
flock ... After my departure (1) fierce wolves will come in among you, not
sparing the flock; and (2) from among your own selves will arise men speaking
perverse things, to draw away the disciples after them" (Acts 20:28-30).
Danger No. 1, "fierce
wolves", was obviously that of persecution from outside the church.
(Compare Matthew 10:16-18, which also speaks of persecutors as wolves attacking
Christ's sheep.) Danger No. 2 was that of false teachers inside the
church.
A close study of the passage in Ephesians shows that Paul still has the same
two groups of enemies in mind. "Principalities, powers and world rulers of
this present darkness" appears to be one of Paul's names for the Roman
rulers who persecuted the early Christians. He actually uses the same two Greek
words, "principalities and powers", of the rulers of the Roman Empire
in Titus 3:1, where they are translated, "rulers and authorities".
The second enemy is "the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly
places". This is a difficult phrase, but in all probability it does in
fact refer to the second enemy of Acts 20: false teachers inside the church. We
can see that this is so by considering the expression a word at a time.
"The heavenly places" is a translation of a Greek word that does not
mean literally, "heaven". It is a figurative expression that Paul
used several times. It nearly always means "positions of high honour".
In Ephesians 1:3 it refers to the great honour of belonging to the Christian
church in this present world. That is what it can be taken to mean here in
Ephesians 6:12, also. But who were these "spiritual hosts of
wickedness" in the early church? First note that the expression "of
wickedness" is just a Hebrew way of saying "wicked". The phrase
"men of worthlessness" is often used in the Hebrew Old Testament, and
it always means "worthless men". In Deuteronomy 13:13 it is used to
describe men who say, "Let us go and serve other gods", and Paul may
have had this verse in mind when he wrote Ephesians 6:12. "Spiritual
hosts" is a loose translation of one Greek word, the word
"spirituals". This word was evidently used in the early church to
refer to Christians who could prophesy by the Holy Spirit, or,
at least, who claimed that they could do so. The word is used in this way in 1
Corinthians 14:37. So we see that, in the language used by Paul and his
readers, "spirituals of wickedness in the heavenly places" evidently
meant, "false prophets in the church". And
this is exactly what the parallel passage in Acts 20 led us to expect.
REFERENCES
1. The Hierarchy of Hell (Robert Hale, London, 1972), page 91.
2. Jesus Christ (Hodder and Stoughton, London, 1927), Chapter 1, Section V.
3. Jesus of Nazareth (Thornton Butterworth, London, 1929), Chapter 2, page 47.
4. Satan Wants You (Hart Davis, London, 1971), page 28.
5. Article, "Satan", in The Encyclopedia of
Jewish Knowledge (Behrman, New York, 1934), page 492.
6. Dictionary of Judaism (Shapiro Valentine, London, 1959), page 67.
7. Cited by I. Asimov, in Guide to Science (Basic Books, New York, 1972),
Volume 2, Chapter 4.
8. Articles "Hippocrates", and "Galen", in The Penguin Medical Encyclopedia
(Penguin Books, London, 1972).
Other Related Pamphlets Published by the CBM:
Bible Teaching about Voodoo, Sorcery and Spirit Religions
Living the Truth
Preaching the Truth
The Gifts of the Holy Spirit
The Sabbath War and Politics: The Christian Duty
The Christadelphian Bible Mission also publishes a range of concise leaflets on
Bible teaching, and a number of correspondence courses. There is also material
in other languages than English. Details will gladly be sent on request.
CBM 1978