Satan, What We Believe, Part 17

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No purchases necessary. Only when provided by law. 18-plus terms and conditions apply. See website for details. One of the things we see about Satan is he's constantly trying to tempt us to evil. Remembering, though, we don't want to forget the context of what we've said.

He is in one place at one time, so he can only deal with one person at one time, OK? Granted, the other demons are working at his behest as well. But what he is going to try to do is always be, as we saw with Job, always trying to accuse and find a way to tempt human beings to disobey God.

Satan as a Created Spiritual Being

Welcome to The Rap Report with your host, Andrew Rapoport, where we provide biblical interpretation and application. This is a ministry of striving for eternity in the Christian podcast community. For more content or to request a speaker for your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.

Welcome to another edition of The Rap Report. I'm your host, Andrew Rapoport, here to look at biblical interpretations and applications to all things in Christian life and culture. I'm joined with my co-host once again, and maybe for the last time for a little while.

We'll see if Bud comes back. But welcome, Jim.

How are you? I'm doing very well. I don't know what Bud was getting paid for this, but it was far too little. I mean, I've been filling in for him for free, and I'm looking forward to him returning. He was getting twice what you get.

Oh, that's perfect.

He's worth every penny. There you go. Hey, this week what we want to do, we want to cover the topic of Satan. Now, there is a lot that you say, well, we know stuff about Satan. There is some misconfusion over Satan and who he is and what he can and cannot do, and we're going to look at those things today on The Wrap Report.

This is going to be continuing in our series. This is part 17 in our series, What We Believe. We encourage you to go to strivingforeturning .org. Go there and look under the About section. Under there, you're going to see the statement of faith that we have, what we believe.

Open the section on angels, and we have already dealt with the issue of holy angels, fallen angels. Now we're going to focus in on one specific angel, and that is Satan. That's going to be our focus today.

Before we get to that, let me just let you guys know, if you happen to already go out to Striving for Eternity, we have a sale that we're running on the book, Sharing the Good News with Mormons. You can get 35 off.

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So I encourage you to go do that. It is a good book on just learning how to evangelize, not necessarily to Mormons, but there are a lot of different ways of approaching things. So you'll end up seeing there's Sean McDowell, who is one of the editors of this, talks about the ways of an evidential approach.

Not really my favorite, but you'll get an idea what that is. Matt Slick has written one really dealing with the issue of can you trust the Bible? It's the reliability approach. Each of these are different tactics or approaches that we had for how to evangelize.

And notice that those don't necessarily have to be only to those that are Mormon. J. Warner Wallace wrote one on basically the case-making approach. Mine was on the open-air evangelism approach. And notice that none of those require anything to know about the Latter-day Saints.

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And from there, you can just put the coupon code LDS for Latter-day Saints and get 35 off. We have not put an end date for this sale as of yet, but when we run out of the current inventory, that's going to be when we cut it off.

So my suggestion is buy it while you can, because after that, we may not do this sale again. All right. With that, Jim, why don't, if you could, we're at strivingforturning .org under the About section, the section that says What We Believe.

We've opened up the section on angels, and if you would be so kind as to read for us the first, well, the first three paragraphs there under Satan. This is continuing, as I said, what we looked at last week.

So if you could do that, that would be wonderful.

Yeah, we've got three paragraphs here, and I just remind the listener that you can go to the website and see the scripture references here. I'm not going to read the scripture references because there are a lot of them here.

So you can go to the website and get the scripture references on your own. Here we are. Satan. Satan was the highest created being that fell in an act of disobedience to God. Satan is a real spiritual person and has intellect, will, and emotions.

Satan is, as all angels are, limited by God. Satan does not know what a person thinks, nor is he everywhere affecting everything. Satan can only be in one place at one time. Satan is called an evil deceiver, seeking to tempt, oppose, and accuse God and his children.

He is the God and ruler of this world, little g God and ruler of this world, the prince of the power of the air and the ruler of the demons. As a serpent, he is crafty and guile and called the red dragon in Revelation.

Satan is God's adversary and is called Belial, meaning worthless or wicked. Satan is not only a person, but he is also active in relation to Christ, God, nations, unbelievers, believers, and the world system.

Okay.

You did a little correction there for those who are not reading along, which we'll get to by mentioning little g God. So we'll get to that. I appreciate you picking up on that for those who are listening by audio.

So let's dig into this. Now, one of the things we want to do, this is building up from what we've been doing in the past couple of episodes. We talked about holy angels. We talked about that there were those that were confirmed in holiness.

And then there was an act where several angels had fallen. And then that single act, they became confirmed in unholiness. They were fallen angels. We refer to them as demons. We looked at that last episode.

In this episode, we're going to dig into one specific demon or unholy fallen angel. And that is Satan, who goes by several names, Lucifer, Satan. We most commonly know him as Satan. He's also referred to as the devil.

We're going to look at some of the other names, adversary. But we end up seeing is, we want to start by saying that Satan was the highest created being that fell from an act of disobedience. And we talked about this in the last episode, the fact that Isaiah 14 talks about that angels had fallen.

They were in heaven. They were cast down. Into the earth. And so we end up seeing there, this is from Isaiah 14, verses 12 to 14. And it says, this is referring to Satan. How you have fallen from heaven, O star of the morning, sun of the dawn.

You have been cut down to the earth. You have weakened the nations. But you said in your heart, I will ascend to heaven. I will rise my throne above the stars of God. And I will sit on the mountain of assembly in the recesses of North.

I will ascend above the heights of the clouds. I will make myself like the most high. Well, you see, there's five times that he says, I will, I will, I will. You get a sense of what this disobedience was from there.

Another passage that also is, many think is a reference to Satan is Ezekiel 28, 11 to 17. Not going to take the time to read that whole passage, but as you read through there, you're going to see this act of disobedience, the pride that Satan had, that his fall.

And so what you see is that out of all the fallen angels, what we see is that he was the highest ranked. Now we've talked about this when we talked about angels, we talked about the fact that there's a ranking, there's a hierarchy, and we end up seeing that out of the fallen ones, Satan was the highest.

Now this does not mean that maybe Michael or Gabriel were higher. Some people are of the belief that Satan, Lucifer was the highest angel. And some think that that's why he had the pride, because he was the top ranked.

He was the number one being under God. And that is where the pride came from and fell. Now that we don't know for sure, because we don't really know all the details of how this hierarchy within the angels works.

But we do know is out of those who have fallen, it seems that Jesus in Matthew 24 refers to the fact, and we looked at this last episode, that the devil and his angels, so it seems like those that followed with him or took part in the rebellion were all under Satan, so he would be the highest.

That doesn't mean in any way whatsoever that Satan is higher than God, stronger than God, or even equal with God. Satan, though he may be the highest created being that fell in that act of disobedience, he is still a creation.

He is still something that God created and therefore is just as much as part of the creation as you and I are or any other animal or any other plant or any other planet. He is a created being. And that's why it's important that the way we worded this here is Satan is the highest created being.

That is to point out the fact that he is a created being. I like how Martin Luther says it, that the devil is God's devil. In other words, Satan may have some authority to do things, but even when it came to Job, he needed God's permission to be able to do the things he did.

This is really, really important for us to understand for a couple of reasons. One, when we look at what this is trying to address, this is addressing the fact that there are some people that treat Satan as if he is God.

I know that no one's going to say Satan is God. Well, okay, maybe some Satanist or something, but the reality is people don't say Satan is God. However, just like the Roman Catholic Church gives Mary the attributes that are reserved for deity, so do many in the charismatic movement, Word of Faith, New Apostolic Reformation, give attributes to Satan that are only true of deity.

And so it's very important to know that he is a created being. He is not all-knowing. He cannot know what's inside your mind. He cannot read your mind. He cannot be all-powerful. He cannot be everywhere present.

These are three of the attributes of deity that are only true of God. Satan is at one place at one time, observing the things that are before him, not knowing things that he doesn't know, and he is not all-powerful.

He needs God's permission to do what he does. So when we think of him, we must always remember he is a created being. We said this in the last episode, Jim, but there are people who they tend to forget and they speak in such a way as if when they're referring to demons, they refer to the devil or Satan and give him attributes that he doesn't actually have.

And we want to caution against that. Satan is a real spiritual person, which means he has intellect, will, emotions. What do we mean by this? It doesn't mean he's got a physical body. So a personhood doesn't mean a body.

There are attributes of deity, attributes of personality, and attributes of morality. God alone has attributes of deity. Angels and humans have attributes of personality, and man has attributes of morality.

If you want more information on that, just go to Striving Fraternity under the Academy. Take our free course that you can take on systematic theology. In the first several weeks, we're going to cover those three areas and the attributes in those.

But God, all these attributes come from God. Some he communicates to angels and to men, and some just to mankind. And that's where we start to see differences. But he is a spiritual being. First off, what that means is, as a spiritual being, he's not physical.

We've discussed this kind of every week that we've been talking about the angels, but angels have an ability, it seems, to be visible at times. They can reveal themselves. It seems that they might need God's permission to do so, but it seems that they can do that.

So he is a real spiritual person. So he has the attributes of personality, as I mentioned, things like intellect, will, emotion. He's not some force. He's not just some good versus bad force that we have in the universe.

This isn't the Jedis. Star Wars isn't real. But the thing that is, Satan is a real spiritual person. He's real, so he's not an imagination. He's not something that's developed for literary style as a good versus bad argument.

He's not a physical person. He does have attributes of personality. So that's why we say a real spiritual person. Now, I mention in here that he has three of the attributes that's communicated from God to Satan, as with any other angel.

Intellect, will, and emotions. Now, Satan's intellect, I think, is far better than ours. His will is clearer, and his emotions are clearer. Not in a good way, but he has a better understanding than we do.

He doesn't have a failing body where our memories kind of fade. I don't know, Jim, you probably aren't old enough to start having that experience where you just can't remember words anymore. It happens once in a while, mostly when I'm preaching.

That's the worst time for it to happen. But Satan has an intellect, which means he can't be a force. This is one of the things that there are some groups that will try to say that Satan is just something that is just an imagery that God created just to show an anti-type of himself.

And I think what you find is people that do that also want to deny things like hell, because that's the real goal of it. If they say that there is no hell, but there is this supernatural evil person of Satan, that creates a dilemma, because, okay, so God is then not just because he's not punishing Satan.

So what some will do is, as they throw out hell in their thinking, they end up having to throw out Satan. That's the reason we're saying he is a real spiritual person. He's capable of intellectual thought, of having a volition, having emotions.

And these are the things that he's going to try to twist when he tries to tempt human beings, because he understands those. Now, in this section that Jim read, there's a lot of scripture passages here that you can go and look up.

We don't have the time to go through this and exegete all the passages, though. I might be tempted to, but we do want to get through this series at some point, so I'm going to refrain. But you can go to the website and check them all out.

Satan's Limited Power and the Error of Word of Faith

The next thing that we talk about is that Satan is, as all angels, are limited by God. Now, I've stressed this, and I keep trying to stress this, because when it comes to Satan, this is what I find is the number one problem when people talk about Satans or demons.

They have this view as if Satans are unlimited, that they're all powerful, as if they can do things that God would say they can't do. I already addressed Job 1 and Job 2. You see that Satan cannot do things without God's permission.

That's important for us to know, because that shows us that Satan is bound and limited by God's will. Now, this is important. We mentioned this a bit last episode, but I want to dig into this more, because there is a group...

I'm going to say this very broadly. There's a group within what's called Christianity. I'll put it that way. But we wouldn't really see them as Christians, though there may be some that are Christians within the group, and that group is Word of Faith and New Apostolic Reformation.

Now, I personally find it very hard to believe that anyone that truly is a Christian, following and understanding what God says in his Word, can be part of Word of Faith or NAR, New Apostolic Reformation, and understand its doctrines.

Why do I emphasize that last bit? Well, there's probably many Christians that are caught up in Word of Faith, NAR teaching, and don't really understand what it's teaching. Don't understand that it's teaching that you, human being, can be a little God.

You could be like God. In fact, so much so that God has to obey what you say. You are the one that gives God instructions, and he listens to you. Very different than what you read in Job. In Job, God has to give permission for Satan to do what he does.

However, what Word of Faith does is they see that and say, Satan was the one to go before God and demand it. And God had to listen, because Satan is the God of this age. I've heard that many times. Jim, maybe you could give a little bit of a background of what it is that the New Apostolic Reformation, and more specifically, Word of Faith theology, teaches with their view about who Satan is and the role that he plays.

Yeah, the New Apostolic Reformation, Word of Faith, they would say that Satan is, as you've described him, the little g God of this world. Since that's how scripture describes him, they would say that he has absolute sovereignty in this realm.

He is the sovereign over this realm. And that because he has tricked Adam into sinning, he has gained access into this creation and now has kicked God out so that the true God no longer has access into this creation.

He has no access into this world. The true God cannot do anything unless you and I, as God's representatives in this world, by a confession of faith, or by an act of faith, or by the words that we speak, or the prayers that we pray, give him access into this creation.

So they would say that prayer is us giving God permission to act in this realm. It's almost like they would say God really, really, really wants to do great stuff here in this realm. He wants to heal.

He wants to conquer the nations. He wants to save people, but he lacks power and authority and access to do that. And he needs us to give it to him. So in their view, Satan is, in terms of this realm, more powerful than God because Satan can do anything he wants here.

God cannot. And in terms of cosmically speaking, Satan and God are at least equal in power and authority as there is this sort of back and forth pushing, shoving match between the two of them. And Satan becomes somebody who at times gets his victory over God rather than Satan being the one whom God controls and whom God, by his sovereignty, gives reign and access in this realm.

And see, we would say God is giving Satan access in this realm for a period of time.

And in doing so, what we end up seeing is that in this teaching, I would think that many that are following under it don't think this through thoroughly. Those who are teaching it clearly because they're actually arguing these things, but what it actually is doing is it is lifting Satan up on high and lowering God to a subservient role.

Now, folks, do you understand why we made the emphasis on that Satan is a created being? The creation is never greater than the creator. The creator is always the sovereign, always the one in greater authority, power.

But what they do in their teaching to try to justify that God wants everything in this world for your best interest. Now, that actually shows you what they're really all about. Self. Go through and look at the scriptures.

Does scripture say that everything's about me? No. Scripture says everything's about God. Oh, by the way, for the covenantalists out there, it's not about Christ. It's about God. That's the difference between...

One of the differences that we would hold different, right? Everything's about God's glory. But what we end up seeing in this is that as we look at that, they will argue that Satan is the ruler. He's the one in charge.

He's the one that can control all things and do all things. And that's why this very next statement is there, which says, Satan does not know what a person thinks, nor is everywhere affecting everything.

Satan can only be in one place at one time. That is very important. That's why I keep reiterating this and emphasizing this over and over, because the fact that we have to realize is we need to know Satan's place.

We can't be lifting him up to a position he doesn't rightfully hold to, nor should he. Satan is a created being known as an angel that fell in disobedience, is now in a category we call demon, but he is created.

And as a created being, he is under God, like the rest of God's creation. So we want to take the time— this is why I asked Jim to explain some of that— because what you end up seeing is, when you end up talking to someone who is word of faith, you're going to hear these things come out.

Had a guy just this past week doing some work in my house, a contractor, and as he comes in, he's mentioning things, and we're just going, hmm, yep, word of faith right there. Why? Because he's mentioning things about Satan's role in this world.

Easy to pick up on that. Well, easy if you know how they think about it, and that's why we want you to see these differences, and that's why we have this statement that so carefully delineates this, so that you see all that's behind a good doctrinal statement.

There's a lot behind this to try to explain some of these things, so that it's clear what we are saying we believe and what we do not believe. Now, some of these things we would see, and as Jim and I joke around with different people within Christianity, covenant theology versus dispensationalism, that we would see those as people who are still brothers in Christ, even though we disagree.

But somebody who's holding that Satan is the god of this world and God is subservient to Satan? No, I have a hard time seeing that they're someone that I'd call a brother in Christ, because they don't have a right view of who God is, nor a right view of who Satan is,.

But start off with the major one. They don't have a right view of who God is. Yeah, isn't that really the heart of idolatry? That's what idolatry is. It's fair to call them an idolater in that sense. Yeah, that'd be true.

That'd be true. So before we get on to the next paragraph talking about how Satan works with human beings and how he tries to deceive us and things, let us take a quick word from our sponsor at this moment, and that's MyPillow.

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And so we're very grateful for MyPillow. I want you to check them out. So the next paragraph we have, it says, Satan is called an evil deceiver seeking to tempt, oppose, and accuse God's children. There's a lot there.

And there's a lot of verses there that we will look at some. And so as we look at this, this is giving us the description of not only who Satan is, but what Satan does. For example, Zechariah 3, verse one, then he showed me Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of the Lord and Satan standing at his right hand to accuse him.

And so that's the first thing that you end up seeing is that he's an accuser. He's there, the word there in Hebrew for accuse is to be at enmity, to be hostile toward. That's what he does. And you say, well, he does that to the saints.

Well, no, not actually, not just the saints, because if we look at Matthew chapter four, we see he's a tempter and he was even willing to try to attempt God himself in the flesh, Jesus Christ. And so one of the things we see about Satan is he's constantly trying to tempt us to evil.

Remembering now, we don't want to forget the context of what we said. He is in one place at one time. So he can only deal with one person at one time. Okay. Granted, the other demons are working at his behest as well, but what he is going to try to do is always be, as we saw with Job, always trying to accuse and find a way to tempt human beings to disobey God.

So one of the things he's called an evil deceiver. Now that right off the bat should be a warning. We don't usually put trust in a deceiver. Now this always puzzles me because in the Quran, you end up having God referred to as the great deceiver.

And he was because if you believe the Quran, if the author of the Quran was right, because the author of the Quran claims that God fooled his own followers in thinking that it was Jesus on the cross when actually it was a lookalike, it was a substitute.

And God just made him look like Jesus. So who did he fool? He fooled his own followers. Okay. If Allah is going to fool his own followers, why in the world would you trust him? It's like trusting Joe Biden when he lies to us.

Over and over again and go,.

Oh, now we could believe him on a war in Ukraine. Really? Like he hasn't lied about everything else he's doing? No. Once someone shows they're a deceiver, don't put trust in them. Simple thinking. But he's not just a deceiver.

He's an evil deceiver. Now some could argue, well, there's good cause for deception. I mean, in warfare, there's deception. It's part of a war ethic where you can deceive someone. You're not going to go and tell everyone your plan.

Well, okay. I'm sorry. I forgot. That is exactly what Joe Biden did. He gave all the plans we had for Russia is with the invasion that before the invasion, three weeks before the invasion, he gave it all that to the Chinese who are not our friends, who gave it to the Russians.

Duh. Okay. So yeah, some people do say exactly what they're going to do. I mean, Biden did say, okay, we won't do anything Russia if you go just this far. And so Russia said, oh, thank you. We'll go that far.

And then once we get there, we'll go further, right? Okay. So in battle, people don't reveal or shouldn't reveal their war plans. Satan actually does reveal his plans. Why? Because he knows they work.

He has a three pronged attack. It's not very hard. He knows it works. It works consistently. It's recorded in scripture. So we know what he's going to do. He's going to have the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life.

Those are the three. It worked in the garden with Eve, and he hasn't had to change that plan. He continues to use the threefold plan of his. But all of those have an evil deception because though they sound good, think about what happened in the garden with Eve.

Oh, God is trying to spare you from something good. He's trying to keep you from having any fruit of any tree. That was his argument. This is good for you, and God wants to keep it from you. He's deceiving with evil intention.

And what does he do? He's looking to tempt. He's looking to oppose you as a Christian. He's looking to accuse you. He stands before God accusing Christians and saying, oh, look at how bad they are. It's exactly what he did with Job.

Attack Job's character, saying how bad Job was. Job's only doing this, God, because you keep a hedge around him. And then he goes to Job, and he's trying to tempt him. He even uses Job's wife, right? The only one that he doesn't kill, the wife.

Why? Because the wife was used for the temptation. Just curse God and die. Notice, after he said no to the wife, you don't see the wife anymore. I don't know. Maybe it's that she just said, okay, I've had it.

I'm leaving because I just like the money he had or the wealth, and now he's got none of it. But she's out of the picture after that. When she's no longer useful to Satan as a temptation, I guess that she's out of the picture.

But this is who Satan is. This is how he's described, and this is what he does. Now, as Jim correctly read this, with emphasis for those who are listening on audio, referring to Satan, it says, Now, this is something we see in Scripture.

So this is not, though, the way, as we said, the word of faith described him. So when you end up seeing this described, John 12, 31, as we look at that one, it says, That's referring to Satan. He's described as the ruler of this world.

That's a description. Now, that doesn't mean he's not under authority of God. He is. But God has allowed him this role of being cast down to earth, having all of the demons under him, and he has some authority over the demons and has some reign that he can do.

Now, he's referred to as a god, lowercase g, in 2 Corinthians 4, 4, in whose case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they may not see the light of the gospel or of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.

So he is referred to as the god of this age. Now, Jim, as you explained, many jump on that to say, Oh, see, he's a god. He has replaced God. And he's the god of this world. And therefore, he has the authority God would have.

And therefore, Jesus had to be ransomed and pay a debt to Satan. And what Word of Faith will actually teach is, when Jesus died on the cross, he had to go to hell and pay a punishment in hell for three days and pay Satan off.

And Satan had to get paid. Yeah, and that's not the meaning of that phrase at all. If that phrase in 2 Corinthians 4, 4 is referring to Satan, and some people have argued that that being a judgment passage, that the title God of this world is actually a reference to Yahweh, and that what is being described there is God blinding the minds of those who do not believe as an act of judicial judgment.

But if we take the phrase God of this world or ruler of this world, and he is called, Satan is called the ruler of this world, it simply means that he is the one whom unbelievers worship in all the various forms.

He is the one behind idolatries. He is the one behind false doctrines. He's the one who controls the world system in terms of that system of thinking and living that leaves God out. Satan is the one who is behind all of that in the sense of directing all of the worldwide rebellion against God.

It doesn't mean that he has as much or more authority than God, the true God in this world. It simply means that right now he is on a very long leash, and he really has the run of this planet in terms of fostering and crafting the rebellion that has allied itself against the one true God.

And I do think, I am coming to the point of thinking that 2 Corinthians 4 is, as you said, is referring to Yahweh. A judgment passage, yeah. As I've been studying through that a couple years ago, I started starting to move to that.

There's another phrase that he's used is the prince of the power of this air, and that's in Ephesians 2 .2, which says, in which way you formally walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that now is working in the sons of disobedience.

Now, this isn't saying that he's controlling all of these things. You know, even as you said, Jim, with the view that he is the God of this world, what you end up seeing there is many people will look at this and say, well, then he has some authority and he's controlling all the evil in the world system.