What If I Told You There Is No Satan…Would You Believe Me?March 27, 2011 On the Imagine There’s No Satan Show and in my books we take a good hard look at a number of inconsistent and contrived doctrines. The primary one we deal with is the question of Satan’s reality. Is Satan real? For some of us the answer is no for others the answer is I don’t know and still for others the answer is Satan definitely does exist. Folks, if you have not taken more than a few moments to think about the existence or non-existence of Satan then I want to invite you to keep searching. On our internet radio show we cover a ton of the proofs about Satan’s non-existence so consider clicking through our archives and do explore other resources on this topic. The fact is you will not get all your answers nor be convinced that Satan is not real from listening to one or two broadcasts or from reading one or two articles about Satan. The idea that Satan is real is so entrenched in culture and religion that it is not possible to convince someone in a thought or two or even in an hour or two. But millions have found that one by one the lessons about Satan that have been propagated for centuries can be dismantled and lead to showing why Satan is not real. There are dozens even hundreds of proofs I could share with you but you might still want to find more, hear more, or understand more than one or two proofs that are talked about in a short article or broadcast. You are smart people and I don’t expect to convince you in any way in a short time….after all it took months of exploring to even begin to see that my belief about Satan was mistaken. So is there one thing I could tell you that would change your mind? I doubt it. Even if I tell you that Lucifer is not an angel who fell from heaven rather the word Lucifer was referring to a great Babylonian King who became so wealthy and powerful that he neglected the Creator and decidedly pursued even more greatness on his own and for his own ego…. This Lucifer, this king who thought he was a god, fell from his lofty position a position we see in Isaiah written as “fallen from heaven.” Even if I tell you that the satan in Job is not a supernatural angel who fell from the skies many years before, rather it is an adversarial group of men, sons of God. Saying they came “before the LORD” means these are men who showed up at the Temple. When these men showed up at the temple talked about wanting to see Job destroyed because of their jealousy….anger is cruel but jealousy who can withstand says the Proverbs. Even if I tell you that Zechariah had a vision of a Satan but the context of his vision reveals that his satan was also was a group of jealous men who did not want Joshua, a sinner in their eyes, to be installed as the high priest when the Temple was reconstructed after they left the Babylonian captivity. Because the word sawtawn just means adversary we are able to learn the vision is about the adversarial men who judged another man’s worthiness to act as a priest. Even if I tell you that the anointed cherub in Ezekiel 28 is not an angel who was in the Garden of Eden with Adam and Eve, rather that the subject of that label there again is a man. In fact the passage says repeatedly you are a man. The subject of the anointed cherub passage is but a human King who like the King in Isaiah who fell from heaven, thought himself to be a god and was then destroyed by men sent by God…just as the promise by Yahweh said would occur. Even if I told you one writer in the bible says God caused David to count the tribes of Israel while another writer claims it was Satan and I explained how this is not a contradiction because the word satan in Hebrew, sawtawn, simply means adversary and God was the sawtawn who was making things adverse for David. That story can be found in 2nd Samuel 24 and 1st Chronicles 21. Even if I told you;
You still might find a need to explore further the idea that Satan is not real. Or even if I explained how;
You still may decide to extend your inquiry about who and what Satan is. I could tell you about the terms devil, satan , old serpent ,beast, and dragon in the Revelation. I might explain how those who had ears to hear understood the coded language of the exiled apostle John. The old serpent is the ancient false religious mindset that started in ancient Babylon or even refers back to Adam and Eve’s agreement with their evil inclination in the Garden…The beast is the oppressive Roman regime of John’s day, the satanas is the adverse religo-politco system of Judaism in the first century and the dragon is another reference to the anti-God religious systems that we found in the Pharaoh of Egypt…a man who was even called a dragon. Even if I showed you that the Greek idea of devil, hell, demons, and Satan was imposed on the true concepts that the people of the bible believed or that the ancient pre-cursor religion to Christianity grabbed hold of a Persian idea in the 6th century before Christ and unwittingly developed the second god that you and I are told is Satan today… Even if I told you that by believing in Satan and also believing in God you and I are not a monotheistic people, rather we are then dualistic at best according to the Bible, I don’t blame you for still needing to figure things out as to whether Satan is real. I say all that to say this… a single show an hour or so long cannot convince a seeker that Satan is a construct of human minds and culture. A single article that speaks to one or two points in the dilemma of who Satan is will not likely be the ballot that swings the vote. What I will say though is that we have the privilege of hearing an argument and then searching to see if there are other reasons to add to the info. Each time you bring yourself to search out the solution to one of your questions you will be getting yet another reason, another proof if you will, that displays how this could be possible. And a piece of the puzzle as to how it is possible that Satan is not real. Then we ought to be able to add together all the individual proofs and come to a final solution as to the reality or non-reality of Satan. Once we find the possibility of no Satan exists, we are then able to hear some interesting instruction from the Apostles that points to sin and wickedness as coming from inside of us. Instruction that leads us to understand Satan is not real and has no influence on humanity. We will see the Apostles teach us to kill the flesh, crucify the Old Man and deny the body of sin. We will hear the Apostles tell us that sin dwells within and our lusts and our own desires, not satanic influence, lead to sin. We will hear the Messiah speak the truth about our heart as the seat of wickedness and in hearing that we will find even the writers of the New Testament letters did not recognize that Satan was real and is the cause of sin and wickedness. After all, we will find that sin entered the world through a man and not through an angel that went rogue. And in so seeing, it is then possible to begin to accept that Satan is not literal and evil is not an external spirit force that cajoles, persuades, justifies, and deceives, RATHER, evil is always inside of you and me and we need to accept it, embrace it, learn how to manage it, and pursue overcoming it? When we are dealing with the Satan, we are dealing with the adversarial inclination, the internal potential to choose evil….inside of us. And that my friends will leave us with a solid grasp on who God is and who we are to Him as well as displaying that this entire journey, the entire human position, condition, and constitution…is only between the creator and you…You and I do not have to contend with a supernatural beast who knows everything about your portfolio and can perform feats that will disrupt your life and steal your freedom to be human. We do not contend with a cosmic evil force who has supernatural powers an abilities. An adversary who has resources that will make our head spin and is so far and above anything you or I as mere humans might be able to contend with. No folks! We contend with only ourselves and choose to submit either to the good in us or to the evil in us. If you want to get rid of Satan perhaps you can start by finding the satan…and a quick look in the mirror will reveal the satan is us.
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James R. Brayshaw