CDGBChapter7

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CRAZY, DELUSIONAL GERMAN BELIEFS

CHAPTER 7

WHO IS SATAN

Till 1979, scholars on gnostic beliefs relied on the criticism of those beliefs in ancient books of history of early orthodox or mainstream Christianity such as those of Irenaeus and others. However, in 1945 ancient texts of gnostic beliefs were discovered at a village called Nag Hammadi in Egypt. Elain Pagels, a scholar in her mid-thirties translated and made sense of these texts and published her book “The Gnostic Gospels” which added to the scholars’ understanding of ancient Gnostic beliefs. Here is how David Remnick described her work in his March 26, 1995, article titled “The Devil Problem” at NewYorker.com:

“Sixteen years ago [now 44 years ago], Elaine Pagels, who was then a professor in her mid-thirties at Barnard College, shattered the myth that early Christianity was a unified movement and faith. It is a rarity for a scholar so young to alter even slightly the historical view of something as vast and essential as the Western world’s dominant religion. Ordinarily, only the physicist or the mathematician can hope to enter early middle age having made a scholarly mark; indeed, for such a scientist a glide into the thirties without distinction can be cause for despair—or a job in university administration. The historian, by contrast, cannot rely on intuition or mental speed. History is an art not only of imagination but also of accumulation—of languages, reading, travel, perspective. Pagels, who is now the Harrington Spear Paine Professor of Religion at Princeton, had accumulated thousands of hours in the library, the classroom, and the archives, and a working command of Greek, Latin, German, Hebrew, French, Italian, and Coptic as well—an appropriately full quiver for a specialist in early Christianity. She had also, at this preposterously early point in her career, hit the academic bull’s-eye.

“In 1979, Pagels published “The Gnostic Gospels,” a brief and elegant analysis of a series of ancient documents known collectively as the Nag Hammadi Library. Just as Edmund Wilson illuminated for a wide audience the importance of the Dead Sea Scrolls, Pagels explained the value and meaning of a trove of manuscripts unearthed in 1945 in the upper-Egyptian desert by a peasant named Muhammad Ali al-Samman. While digging near the village of Nag Hammadi for sabakh, a soft soil used as fertilizer, Muhammad Ali found a red earthenware jar. Thinking there might be gold inside, he smashed the jar with his mattock and found instead thirteen papyrus books bound in leather. That night, his mother burned much of the find in the oven as kindling. What she did not burn ended up in the hands of black marketeers, antiquities dealers, and, eventually, scholars of first- and second-century Christianity.

“Through a careful reading of the fifty-two sacred texts that survived—they are Coptic translations of Greek originals, some as old as the four Gospels—Pagels made it clear that early Christianity was far more complicated than anyone had ever imagined. A wildly diverse compendium of poems, chants, myths, gospels, pagan documents, and spiritual instructions, the texts are distinct evidence of fierce theological debate and of an alternative tradition within early Christianity—a kind of mystical variant, much like the Zen tradition in Buddhism, Kabbalah in Judaism, Sufism in Islam. What was more, Pagels argued, the early Church Fathers, in their attempt to eliminate this more experiential Christianity in favor of building an orthodox institution—a universal, or catholic, church—declared the texts to be heretical. The Gnostics may well have buried the texts to avoid brutal purges being led by the notorious Bishop of Alexandria, Athanasius, in the year 367...the Church leaders canonized the Gospels attributed to Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John as a reliable basis for a social organization with mass appeal. Gnosticism, with its emphasis on individual divinity and unmediated personal communion, was a threat to the authority of bishops and priests. Its suggestion, for instance, that the Resurrection of Jesus was a mythological vision, rather than, as the Synoptic Gospels assert, a historical event, was intolerable, and so was the Gnostic notion that God was both father and mother of Jesus. Thus, in the second century an orthodoxy began to take shape—and, with it, a temperament. Irenaeus, the orthodox Bishop of Lyons and one of the leading crusaders against the Gnostics, declared that, while certain heretics “boast that they possess more gospels than there really are,” no Church leader may, “however highly gifted he may be in matters of eloquence, teach doctrines different from these.”

Publication of this book gained Elaine Pagels fame at a very early age. The book added to the knowledge of Gnostic scholars who are also scholars of early forms of Christianity other than Christianity based only on the Bible.

Then in June 1995, Pagels published her second important book, “The Origin of Satan.” Though I checked out the book from the library to read, I decided not to waste my time on it after reading a couple of reviews of the book. According to these reviews, her central thesis in the book is that “Satan” is the ancient Jewish and Christian name for the human “other,” for people who are different from ourselves, and pose a challenge to our identity. In other words, we demonize people who are different from us by attributing their otherness to Satan the devil. According to her, there is no real being called Satan. It is something Jews and orthodox, or mainstream Christianity has created to attribute the deeds of our enemies perceived as evil to that mythical being. Satan has been created to associate evil with a being as Jews and Christians associate good with God.

Pagels is being disingenuous. She means that Satan is a fictional creation of Jews and Christian to attribute the deeds of enemies just as they associate good with their God. But the Germans do communicate with or receive communications from the being the bible calls Satan. That’s why I did not want to waste time reading her book.

To the Germans, Satan is not an evil being. To them he is Lucifer, the light bringer, a divine being, an aeon as they call such divine beings, the one who gives them the secret knowledge necessary for salvation, which only the Germans can receive and understand, because they only have the divine spark in them, and no other human beings.

While this explains the Germans’ views of Satan the devil, in Christianity, he is a fallen angel who rebelled against the Creator God, became an adversary of God to oppose God by any and all means. He is also called the Destroyer, who seeks to destroy what God has created or as the Bible describes him in 1 Peter 5:8, “Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walks about, seeking whom he may devour.” That’s why he is evil.

With what I have discussed in this book, I hope I have convinced the reader that Satan is a liar and has deceived the Germans, like He has deceived almost all of humanity (Revelation 12:9). How can one consider a liar to be a good being and a light-bringer? A liar will lie some time and the purpose of lying is to deceive the one being lied to.

SATAN AS REVEALED IN THE BIBLE

In contrast to the German beliefs, in brief, the bible reveals that Satan is a real spirit being, originally created by God as the archangel Lucifer with hundreds of millions of other angels. Then the heavens and the earth were created. Lucifer was then given rule over the earth, possibly with one-third of all the angels. But Lucifer and the angels under his rule rebelled against God. Since then, he has become an adversary of God and been known as Satan and the rebelling angels are known as unclean spirits or demons. Satan opposes God at every opportunity and in every project, including deceiving mankind about God’s purpose for creating humans and rejecting His Law.

Everything in the universe including the angels was created by the Word, who later came to earth as Jesus Christ. John 1:1-2, “1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made.”

The word angel means “messenger” which is what the angels are.

Hebrews 1:7, 14, “7 And of the angels he says [in Psalm 104:4], Who makes his angels spirits, and his ministers a flame of fire...14 Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation?” They are also called “sons of God” because they were created by God and then saw God creating the heavens and the earth (Job 38:4,7, “4 Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? ... 7 When the morning stars [another name for angels] sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?).

Lucifer was originally created perfect but chose to sin and rebelled against God (Ezekiel 28:12-17). It seems one-third of the angels followed him in his rebellion and attempted to wrest the throne of the universe from God but were defeated and cast down to earth (Revelation 12:4, Isaiah 14:12-15, Luke 10:18, 2 Peter 2:4).

Hundreds of millions of righteous angels still serve God (Revelation 5:11), even though one-third rebelled.

Some of Satan’s character traits are mentioned in the Bible. Satan means “adversary” in Hebrew. The Greek translation of the word is diabolos, from which we get the English word devil. It means “slanderer.”

Satan is called “accuser” of the brethren (Revelation 12:10, Zechariah 3:1), the great dragon and serpent who deceives the whole world (Revelation 12:9). He is a murderer and there is no truth in him. He is a liar and the father of lies (John 8:44). He is described as a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour (1 Peter 5:8). He is also called a destroyer (Revelation 9:11); tempter (Matthew 4:3, 1 Thessalonians 3:5), and the prince of the power of the air (Ephesians 2:2), meaning he broadcasts in thoughts, moods, attitudes and feeling, and not only in words.

Satan is referred to by different names and descriptions that denote some of his evil roles, characteristics and actions. Besides "the devil," he is also called Apollyon and Abaddon, meaning "destroyer" and "destruction," respectively (Revelation 9:11); Belial, meaning "worthless" or "wicked" (2 Corinthians 6:15); Beelzebub, the name of a Philistine god meaning "Lord of flies" (Matthew 12:24-27, compare 2 Kings 1); the great dragon and serpent (Revelation 12:9).

Satan is wily (Ephesians 6:11) and seeks to deprive human beings of eternal life (Luke 8:12). However, Satan can only do what God permits him to do (Job 1:12, 2:6).

The Bible also describes Satan’s future fate. At present he is called “the god of this age (2 Corinthians 4:4), and “ruler of this world (John 12:31; John 14:30; John 16:11). However, his reign will end at the return of Jesus Christ (Revelation 11:15).and he will be bound in the abyss for a thousand years during the reign of Jesus Christ so that he can no longer deceive the nations. Then he will be released for a short time (Revelation 21:1-3, 7-8) and permitted to deceive the nations for the last time. It appears this is a test for the demons to see which ones will follow Satan to deceive the nations again after the millennium (1,000 years).

After that Satan and the demons who followed him to deceive the nations one last time will be permanently removed and "cast into the lake of fire and brimstone" (Revelation 20:10), which is "prepared for the devil and his angels" (Matthew 25:41).

It appears that Satan’s fate has already been decided that he is to be permanently destroyed. This is indicated in Ezekiel 28:18-19: “18 You [that is Satan] have defiled your sanctuaries by the multitude of your iniquities, by the iniquity of your traffic; therefore will I bring forth a fire from the midst of you, it shall devour you, and I will bring you to ashes upon the earth in the sight of all them that behold you. 19 All they that know you among the people shall be astonished at you: you shall be a terror, and never shall you be any more.”

A normal fire that can consume human beings and material things does not consume spirit beings like Satan and the demons. But God will prepare a special fire (Matthew 25:41) that will consume Satan and the demons who followed him to deceive the nations one last time so that they are turned to ashes and are no more (Ezekiel 28:18-19), along with the rest of humanity that failed to repent.