An introduction to the Devil
As I continue to produce this blog, I want to ensure that I’m led by the Holy Spirit and not my own thoughts as to what I write about. One thing that I kept getting nudged about is this misconception that the world has regarding the identity of the Devil. It seems that non-believers all know the Devil, but very few know who he is.
There’s a famous verse in the Gospels where Christ tells His disciples that all sins will be forgiven, except for the sin of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit (Matthew 12:32, Mark 12:29). What Jesus is referring to here is where one has the knowledge of who the Devil is and consciously chooses to worship him. This made me realise that there are therefore two groups who can tell us about the character of the Devil - believers, particularly Jesus Himself, and this other group. In order to provide different perspectives for the reader, I am going to use both of those groups to provide a thorough introduction into the man of sin, the Devil.
If we’re to start with an introduction from ones who blaspheme the Holy Spirit, we need to look no further than the entertainment industry. Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones provide us with a fine introduction in their aptly titled song, Sympathy for the Devil.
Please allow me to introduce myself
I'm a man of wealth and taste
I've been around for a long, long years
Stole million man's soul an faith
Pleased to meet you
Hope you guess my name
But what's puzzling you
Is the nature of my game
Just as every cop is a criminal
And all the sinners saints
As heads is tails
Just call me Lucifer
'Cause I'm in need of some restraint
Mick Jagger does what the Devil rarely does and starts by giving us a clear introduction, followed by the more typical deception and inversion in that last verse. We find more inversion in the Led Zeppelin song about buying a stairway to ‘Heaven’ where we learn that sometimes words have two meanings and that the piper's calling you to join him. Play the song backwards and you’ll learn about his true character as the one who's little path would make me sad, whose power is satan and the lamentation from the one who worshipped him that I will n'er be saved, because I live with Satan. Funnily enough I never thought anything of it when I heard the backwards version almost 20 years ago as a school kid who loved rock music and thought Jesus was a myth, but looking at it now as a believer it gives me the chills.
Before I get lost in just some of the more blatant introductions from pop culture, I want to convey the most important message of this whole piece. The message from the blasphemers of the Holy Spirit is strikingly similar to the message from the Bible about the identity of the Devil - he is that serpent of old, called the Devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world (Revelation 12:9). A key element of the Devils deception is how he presents himself to us - he is not the fiery red dragon that we’re used to seeing, but instead he is a crafty and charming seducer who beguiles us. The Devil has a single objective and it’s not to create murderers, thieves and rapists, but to distance mankind from God. The name Satan is derived from the Hebrew term hasatan, which translated literally means the adversary - in other words, God's adversary.
We see this clearly from the four most significant encounters with the Devil in the Bible. We first meet him in the Garden of Eden where he tempts Eve with the proclamation that You will not surely die. For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil (Genesis 3:4). Then during Christ’s ministry, He is tempted three times by the Devil. The call to give in to His fleshly desires by commanding that these stones become bread (Mat. 4:3), the dare to show off with the challenge that If You are the Son of God, throw Yourself down (Mat. 4:5), and the offer of all the Kingdoms in the world if You will fall down and worship me (Mat. 4:9).
He will offer you secret knowledge that he claims will make you as a god yourself, encourage you to give in to various desires of your flesh, encourage you to act with pride and ego and offer you treasures on earth in return for worshipping him. Satan disguises himself as an angel of light (2 Corinthians 11:14). If this already sounds like a very different character to the red fiery demon that you might have had pictured, then realise that the Devil has most likely already succeeded in deceiving you. One of the most important lessons the Bible teaches us about the Devil is that he is the prince of the power of the air (Ephesians 2:2), which means that he is given dominion to rule on earth. God allows this because to allow His adversary dominion in this world is the most perfect way to exalt His Heavenly Kingdom - only in experiencing the death of sin can we consciously choose to seek eternal righteousness. God desires that we choose to reunite our souls with Him in His eternal Kingdom, whereas Satan desires to destroy our souls. The sin that is the most displeasing to God is the rejection of Him and worship of other gods - essentially the opposite of loving the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind which Christ tells us is the first and great commandment. This makes logical sense when you understand that God is the Creator - any other sin is the breaking of a moral law that He has established, but to worship other false gods is to reject Him entirely.
If you’re to put yourself in the shoes of the Devil, the ruler of this world whose objective is to separate mankind from their Creator and put them in the way of the ungodly, how might you achieve this goal? I think Hollywood gives us the answer when Kevin Spacey’s character in The Usual Suspects tells us that the greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist. By concealing his true identify from the world, Satan is able to go about his business of destroying souls uninterrupted. Satan uses inversion as one of his main strategies because he doesn’t need to convince man of any single truth, but rather he is content with any version of the truth that is opposed to God. Those who fall victim to this inversion are spoken about by Isaiah - Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; Who put darkness for light, and light for darkness (Isaiah 5:20).
A major theme of the Bible throughout is duality and the removal of ambiguity. There's no half truth, everything is presented to us as either good or evil and never anything in between. Once I'd rejected the ideas of post modernism and relative truth in favour of absolute truth, this was one of the key elements which convinced me of the Bibles divine authorship and truth. The Bible presents us with logical and unambiguous truth and it has over 800,000 words without contradiction to support the claim. It couldn’t be clearer about the duality of the two paths we can choose - the one of righteousness that submits to God’s will, or the one of sin that rejects God’s will. There is no middle path, Biblically speaking, where one rejects God but ‘lives a good life’. The first of the Psalms, in just 6 verses, presents this duality perfectly - the Lord knows the way of the righteous, But the way of the ungodly shall perish (Psalm 1:6). The way of the ungodly takes many forms and every way of a man is right in his own eyes (Proverbs 21:2), but as the second part of the Proverb warns us, the Lord weighs the hearts. When I consider this Proverb, the postmodern concept of your truth being your truth and every man being his own moral judge is straight from the playbook of Satan.
If we know from the Bible that Satan gives all the treasures of this world to those who bow down and worship him, then it makes sense that the vilest men are exalted (Psalm 12:8) and we see clear evidence of his presence everywhere. The institution that has deceived the world about Christ’s ministry and gathered great riches in the process has an Audience Hall with an uncanny resemblance to the serpent of Genesis 3. The group who are accelerating science and seeking the answers to the nature of our universe by trying to convince us that nothing created everything, not only have a 666 as their logo but also performed a blatantly Satanic ritual to open their new facility. The worlds most powerful business and political leaders meet every year to worship the owl representing Moloch. One of the most powerful fashion houses in the world, Balenciaga, has a penchant for pedophilia and child sacrifice. The major ceremonies for every realm of pop culture, from Super Bowl halftime shows to Grammy’s performances, are littered with Satanic rituals and symbology. And one doesn't need to look too deeply into the Epstein Island activities to realise that the sacrifices of Leviticus 18:21 are alive and well today.1
Though I mention these Satanic influences that dominate our society, in no way am I putting forward the Cultural Christian rhetoric that we must shut it all down. I mention it mainly to convey the point that with Satanic worship at the highest levels, anyone who consume their content have undoubtedly been influenced and more often than not it is at a subconscious level. As noted earlier in this piece, God allows this Satanic dominion on earth because in seeing it we can exalt His Kingdom and my path to faith is evidence of this - it was in identifying evil that I sought to find its adversary. God lets us see the evidence of Satans character everywhere through the outcomes of the lives of those who follow him. John’s Gospel speaks of them that ‘You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you want to do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own resources, for he is a liar and the father of it’ (John 8:44). Those who were seemingly given all the treasure of the world, like Elvis Presley or Michael Hutchence, learned this in the end. Selling your soul to the devil is never worth the price you pay.
Overt Satanism might be evil in its purest form, yet I think that it’s the deceptive Satanism that comes from Genesis 3 that is infinitely more dangerous for the common person. Most of us won’t consciously sell our souls to the Devil, but unfortunately most of us will allow the Devil to deceive us just as he did with Eve in the Garden of Eden. The lie that we can ignore God’s commandments and ‘be like God’ ourselves leads souls to the same eternal damnation as every other pathway in Satan’s playbook. Jesus warns us that wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it. Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it (Matthew 7:13-14). Life equals God’s Kingdom of Heaven, destruction equals eternal damnation in Hell, and the narrow gate to Heaven is Jesus Christ alone (John 14:6). This is the uncomfortable truth that Jesus is very clear on - to reject Him is to choose an eternity with Satan. There is no purgatory or other way, despite what some Churches might try to tell you.
By understanding the Bible, you can understand that every single religious system traces its roots back to Genesis 11, the Tower of Babel and ultimately Satan. The Tower of Babel was the start of Satans inversion, which continued on from his lie in Genesis 3 that men can be like God. Men built a tower whose top is the heavens (Gen. 11:4), believing that in doing so they could reach Heaven via their own means and not through God alone. God was so displeased that He destroyed the tower, muddled up their language (hence the word ‘babble') and scattered them abroad across the face of the earth. This was the original Mystery Babylon religion and in the dispersion, it evolved into thousands of different religions. Each appeared differently with their own names for gods but ultimately had the same message - that man can be like God through the acquisition of some knowledge or enlightenment. It explains Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Roman Catholicism2, Mormonism, Judaism, Occultism, Gnosticism and everything else in-between. For an excellent analysis of this, which goes into far more detail than I could possibly go here, I highly recommend this video series.
Going back to Hollywood one last time, there's a storyline that is as purely Satanic and a perfect example of Mystery Babylon. It puts Satans inversion technique on full display, because the narrative is one that most people would have described as good prevailing over evil and not the other way around. It's the narrative of V For Vendetta and The Matrix - where man is trapped in a prison system by a ruler who is suppressing the truth from them, but by raising their own consciousness through acquiring secret knowledge they can escape this system and break free (video with further explanation). Not only is it the same narrative as the New Age with their Kundalini awakenings and third eye chakras, but it is quite literally a Hollywood production of Genesis 3:4-5.
At the end, God brings those who chose Him into His Kingdom and He casts Satan and all those who chose him, consciously or through ignorance, into eternal damnation in Hell. If you've not chosen Christ, then either consciously or by default you've chosen Satan. If you’re a non-believer and you don’t agree with this, then your position relies on Jesus Christ being a liar and I’m not sure that’s something you should bet your eternal life on.
I do not endorse the links to these videos, as many of them are produced by people whose actions are as equally unbiblical as the things they are commenting on. The entire conspiracy theory / ‘truther’ community is shrouded in deception, despite many of the truths that they unearth. I link them just to show a clear example of what I am referring to and encourage readers to do their own further research.
Whilst I believe that Roman Catholicism is a Satanic religious system, I do still believe that many followers are indeed saved by Christ. To be saved is to accept Christ with your heart and mouth as Lord and Saviour, which can still be done whilst practicing Catholicism.