Chapter 1 - There’s A Mountain Of Evidence Against Satan?

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Who’s Up To The Challenge Of Proof?

When one takes on the challenge to honestly search for answers to the questions that have plagued man for centuries, he or she will discover great things. Several years ago, I took up this challenge. I too had questions that remained unanswered by the religion I was raised in. I asked the very same questions that are asked by children everywhere; why doesn’t God just destroy Satan? Why did God create Satan if He knows everything? Why does God let Satan bring harm to humans if God is a God of love? To my delight though, I realized I do not need to accept the religious answers that were really no answers at all. Answers that I was given as a child. Answers that became part of every little boy and girl’s knowledge base about Satan, evil, and Hell. No, the status quo has faded from its place as glossy platitude that placates the masses. I am an adult now and now, I can ask these questions and fearlessly go find answers…answers that make sense and that don’t sound like fairy tales. Answers that find their base in history and contextual examinations of the Bible. Answers that reconcile the apparent contradictions in the Bible instead of glossing over some of the more simple statements we find there. For example, if the God of the Bible says He is the only God and there is none like Him then why is Satan so much like God in so many ways? Why is Satan displayed as a God by religion if God says there are no other Gods? And why does one passage in 1st John say Satan is a liar and a murderer from the beginning yet Christian doctrine about Satan claims he was perfect in the beginning according to Ezekiel 28? There are hundreds and hundreds of these contradictions and now, because of the freedom I have to ask questions about them and find answers, I have been able to search out answers to every one of the questions I have ever had about who and what Satan is. In these volumes, you will find all of the questions and answers that many brave explorers and I have dealt with. Questions such as why Isaiah’s Lucifer is spoken of as a man and King in Isaiah 14 but Christendom makes him out to be a supernatural entity. Why the Satan in Job is said to be a group of wicked men by Job himself but religion places the adversary of Job as a cosmic player? Why does the noun sawtawn get translated as a name by scholars when translating out of the Hebrew? Why are we told sin brings death and man brought sin into the world yet religion blames Satan for both sin and death? Why is it that God claims He makes peace and creates evil yet believers in Satan state Satan is the creator of evil?

These questions can go on and on, and that is why this book series is four volumes long. Good news though, you don’t have to start at volume one nor do you have to read all four of these fantastically detailed works to begin getting answers. Pick up any one of these books and you will find yourself able to comprehend how the Satan idea became such a deeply embedded cultural consciousness. Moreover, you will gain many of the tools you need to understand what is meant, apart from reading my view on the matter, when the words Satan, devil, demons and the like are used. The quest for me has been life changing. As it has for untold thousands. And I guarantee it will be for you. Life will get better without Satan.

But what brings us to this point in our literary journey? Why is it, in this fourth volume, we are dealing with all the Apostolic writings beginning with Acts and plodding our way right on through to The Revelation? Well, allow me a moment to address that question.

Years ago, it was discovered that Satan is not real. The layers of that traditional doctrine were peeled back one by one and each new layer revealed yet another flaw in the common doctrine of Satan. The most thorough way to do such an exploratory process on such an age-old traditional doctrine was to examine it from its beginnings. Not only did we examine the idea of a second lesser God entering thought and migrating into Judaism and Christianity, but also we began mining for Satan in the very first book of the Bible. And that began in Volume 1 – Satan Christianity’s Other God – Legend, Myth, Lore, Or Lie

In that inaugural volume, we discovered so much about the doctrine of satan, its origins, and just what was being said about the satan by many of the most well known authors of Biblical books. In Genesis, we learned man was responsible for evil and the iconic characters of that storybook never pointed to a cosmic evil entity as the purveyor of evil. There is no Satan here; we simply find man was created with the potential to choose good or to choose evil. The latter of those is the “evil inclination.” That my friends, is all some need to learn to find that man is His own satan and is an adversary. And “adversary” is the meaning of the Hebrew word sawtawn. If we consider that the Bible is a Hebrew document in many ways, we learn that man is a satan to God, to himself, and to other men at times. As we made our way along the journey, we found repeatedly the Scriptures taught that God is the creator of all things good and all things evil. We heard the word Satan is really just a transliterated Hebrew word that means adversary. It was never meant to be the name of a fabricated evil being and it only references men or God when used in the Scriptures.

In the book of Numbers, we found that an angel is a man in almost all cases when the word angel is used in the Bible. Within that discovery, we learned that an angel of God was actually the Satan to the prophet Balaam. In one simple story, we learned again that God or His messenger is Satan and not a cosmic evil entity. 

Can You Stomach Such A Monstrous Claim?

A monstrous claim was made as our thinking began to be reshaped on who and what Satan is. That monstrosity was one clarion charge that said, if Satan is real then God is a liar. I touched on it above but this claim is of such monstrous proportions that I will mention it again. It is no secret that God claims to be the only God and that there are no other Gods like Him in heaven or on Earth. Yet the things that are ascribed to Satan, the attributes and acts which Satan can supposedly perform, are God abilities … this then says there is one like God. With that in mind, many readers began to understand that if they believe Satan to be real then they are not monotheistic. Believing in Satan means they do not believe in just one God, they in fact believe in two Gods. The charge of being dualistic was the hardest pill to swallow for those making their way down the road to a Satan-free world.

It was also shown that the Old Scratch does not send evil and lying spirits to mess with man. Scripture was abundantly clear on the fact that both evil and lying spirits come from God. In cases such as the evil spirit from the Lord that was sent on Saul and Abimilech, we learned there is no Satan to accuse in the area of evil and lying spirits. God again shoulders the burden of blame for evil and lying spirits; the Scriptures clearly say so.

We spared no expense in coming to a sound conclusion on who gave us the doctrine of Satan. This stage of the de-satanizing process pointed directly at the Persians. Many have taught that Persian dualism, a view of two Gods in the cosmos battling for supremacy, was carried out of Persia with the repatriated Hebrew people in the 6th Century BC. A Greek takeover filled the Persian idea of a lesser evil God with all the myth and lore of the Greek pantheon. Greek theology brought us to the Satan we have in our minds today.

Of all the points made against the existence of a literal Satan in the previous volumes, few are returned to as frequently as these next major discoveries are. It was unearthed by examining the Scriptures, that the Lucifer of Isaiah 14 was just a human king who fell from a lofty place in world rule. St. Jerome had used a Latin word, lucifer, to interpret the Hebrew term that told of the bright status of a once great King. We came to conclude then that the very foundational doctrine Christendom uses to build its satanology, is indeed not about a cosmic being at all. The text speaks of this bright morning star as a man. That man was thought to be God by those who were contemporary with Isaiah. And the planet Venus was believed to be represented by this God-King. We soon found no reason to agree Lucifer is a cosmic entity because the planet Venus was a bright morning star and a King who fell became the fallen star in the poetic words of an ancient prophet.

In like manner, the anointed cherub of Ezekiel 28 was handily removed from its place as a cosmic evil entity who was once a perfect angelic creature. Again the text betrays Christian doctrine by making several mentions that this ruler who was appointed to cover a nation with equity and protection, is also just a man. He ruled powerfully, traded richly, and was to die physically…just like all men do.

What a relief it was to learn of Job’s Satan. Poor old Job. This wonderful man was not given over to a supernatural beast to be all but destroyed. The language itself testifies to a human adversary as Job’s satan. And Job himself boldly points his finger at two sources for his tribulations. It is not an evil Satan who harmed Job. It is Job’s God at whose hands evil came upon Job and it is at the hands of wicked men that Job was set to suffering. We cemented these facts by finding that to “come before the Lord” as is said of Job’s adversaries, simply referred to an appearance at a temple environment here on earth. This pivotal insight lent great cause to understanding Job’s satans were truly human adversaries. Adversaries who possessed insane jealousy towards old Job. Taking into consideration that the tale of Job was set in a style of writing known as Aggadah, or Wisdom Literature, it became clear this form of literary communication was not intended to be taken literally. Particularly in the area of a literal Satan hammering Job while God sat back and watched him suffer.

As for the Satan in Zechariah’s vision. Well, once again, the story played out to reveal the Satan standing at the right hand to accuse Joshua, the newly appointed High Priest, was only a group of anti-Joshua men. Satans who felt their leadership of the repatriated community ought to be given greater value than Joshua’s leadership. As accusers of Joshua who pointed at his unworthiness for the High Priest job, they were the only satan here. This satan was the group of men who were adverse to God’s plan for the young Joshua as he was installed as High Priest of Israel.

To have come all this way without examining the Serpent in the Garden would be a grave error. And in the final chapters of Volume 1, the conclusion was displayed as to just exactly what the serpent was. Proofs were given, cross-references were cited and when all the pieces were examined, it was detailed how not only do they not fit together, but that there are extraordinary deficiencies in the teaching that the Serpent is Satan or was inhabited by Satan. Our famed serpent, as vilified as it is for the place Moses’ allegory puts it in, is only a metaphor. A metaphor for man’s stealthy and cunning ability to justify disobedience. And if that was not an adequate explanation for who or what the serpent is, we hear another possibility. There is a great probability that Adam was the serpent. Adam was the man who was “with her” when Eve ate of the tree. He did nothing to protect or defend the woman from the serpent’s beguiling. Adam may well be the serpent who subtly coerced the woman into making a bad choice. A choice that he himself wanted to make but when tendencies to justify a wrong choice develop, it may be Adam wanted to have someone else to blame the disobedient action on. An action that was always a possibility for a man created with the ability to choose good or to choose evil.

Finding Satan Is Harder If Death Is Silent

The plight to find Satan to be a non-entity, bounded across another historical barrier with the introduction of Volume 2 – Imagine There’s No Satan- How Satan Got Into the New Testament.

And What About The Place Of The Dead?

When dealing with the Satan of Christian lore, one can hardly get around the question of the dead. If there is no Satan and Hell, then where do the dead go? Finding scads of biblical proofs for the state of the dead seemed to be the only possible resolution to the problematic question. And in dealing with this query, V2 found us examining the Witch of Endor story. In a story that has been heralded as an amazing testimony to the psychic world and the ability of certain spiritists to contact the dead, we put this tale to serious scrutinizing. Of the many findings that surfaced on the exploration, one of the more potent discoveries was that there is no spirit world to contact. Dead means dead we learned. The dead stay dead unless a future resurrection is brought into the picture, as Scripture suggests. This second volume established that psychics are very clever and intuitive practitioners of little more than adept guessing. As in the Witch of Endor’s case, a well-versed psychic receives no information from beyond the grave. He or she simply utilizes adept communication and listening skills as the information is mined out of a sitter. The “sitter” is a subject who unwittingly delivers everything the psychic needs to design statements that become true to the sitter. An amazing dismantling of psychic abilities brought us to the place that showed how Satan inspires nothing in the psychic realm.

Speaking of mining… a bright light was cast on the dark understanding of Satan’s pre-Jesus existence. Confirmation after confirmation was given to show how Jesus never knew about the Satan of Christianity. When you are a first century Hebrew messianic candidate, you don’t adopt Greek thinking about a second lesser deity. You embrace the Hebraic understanding that man is the satan as is found in the Old Testament. After all, the Old Testament informs the New Testament writing and not the other way around.

All the satanological doctrine building has come from somewhere. Although the major sentiment on the New Testament is that Christendom today has a feeble understanding of it, an iron-clad argument that neither Christ nor the Apostles used the New Testament to build doctrine is made in Volume 2. In fact, there is no evidence in the New Testament or the Old that the Apostolic Writings were thought of or used as Scripture by the believers in the first and early second centuries. How can one concoct a doctrine of Satan from letters that are not even Scripture? Compelling answers to the dilemma of New Testament authority are given to help the explorer see the senselessness of using the New Testament to establish a belief in Satan…even if the message is distorted by misapplying the millennia old words and stories.

What Did The Persians, Greeks, And Pharisees Bring Us?

It is indeed a challenge to trace the origins of an idea. But be thankful, what would a journey to a Satan-free life be like without knowing the path this life-sucking doctrine of the world’s most powerful religion took? Our examinations of the Pharisees brought us just the info we were looking for. These most derisional religious icons had a leading role in the saga of Christianity’s Satan. A look back at their journey and connections with Persia showed how the Pharisees were raised up by Persian Magi from Farsi. As spiritual children of Persian magicians, the power hungry Pharisees glommed onto the idea of an evil lesser God and forced it into the psyche of the Jerusalemites under their care. As the group most responsible for guiding religious thought in the centuries after leaving Persia, the Pharisees were able to instruct the masses in the ways of Satan. The sequel to their epic move was even more subtle. The Hellenization of a people allowed Greek ideas to fill the holes in an oddly unbiblical doctrine of Satan. Voila, Satan was then given to the Christians and we now have the Greeks to thank for that.

Because I am dealing with Satan in Revelation in this present volume, I found the need in volume 2, only to address how the Revelation is seen and used by Christian scholars of our era. Through a series of rudimentary investigations, it was shown that the Satan of Christianity cannot be found in the book 0f Revelation.

There was no cosmic Satan in the minds of John or of any of the biblical writers. You and I have been handed an ancient myth that was constructed by man. When we stumble on the English words in this ancient Greek document that was written by Hebrew thinkers, we should be careful to honor the intent of the author. The authorial intent is known to be a whole lot different and a whole lot less mystical than the intent of those in Christianity who have taken it on themselves to interpret these ancient writers. They have mistakenly interpreted writers like John through their own Greco-Roman, 21st century, pre-determined perspective that Satan is real. John had visions that displayed non-literal elements and Christian theologians applied their thinking that these elements were intended to be literal. A survey of John’s highly graphic visions reveals literalness is an impossibility and there is no Satan to be found in Revelation.

How Do We Scrub A Brainwashed Mind?

As we hurdled towards the release of this volume, diligence was required in making our way through the Gospels. The important next step in the revolutionary process of dismantling Satan, was to deal with every passage about Satan, the devil, and demons that are found in the Gospels. And along came Who’s The Devil Jesus Knew- Explaining Satan In The Gospels, the third volume is the most thorough discussion on who and what Satan is in the Gospels that you will find.

Did you know that a lie told long enough becomes the truth? That is the case for this idea that Satan is real. And when an idea is proliferated in so many sectors and segments of society, the recipients of that lie become brainwashed into a state of unquestioned acceptance of the lie. Satan has been taught as being real in homes, churches, schools, radios, televisions, movie theaters, books, and video games for dozens of centuries. How can we expect one to push back against such an entrenched belief? To answer that question there are two ways to go about this. The only way to fight a lie for some is with another lie, while for others, as daunting, and insurmountable as the mountainous lie might be, the only way to combat a lie is to tell the truth. Before we got Volume 4 off the shelf, we needed to hear the truth about all the satan talk in the Gospels. Satan this and Satan that, casting out devils, and battling demon possessed; disturbing confrontations with a guttural devil in a man and on and on and on. But what are all those encounters if not evidences of literal Satanic activity?

The long and short of it is that the word satanas found in the Greek comes from the Hebrew word for adversary, sawtawn. Any unbiased scholar will tell us then, that the Greek word must represent and be defined by the Hebrew meaning of the word. Therefore, the Satan in the New Testament is informed by the sawtawn of the Old Testament. That leaves us with some pretty clear conclusions on what a satan and a demon are. Conclusive findings showed that satan, demons, devils, and unclean spirits are several things. And one of those things is not the supernatural entities Christendom has suggested they are. We find the satan of the Bible to be; an adverse person, an adverse situation, a physical illness, a mental infirmity, a false teacher of false doctrine, an erroneous belief or false doctrine, a person who is a deceiver, a person who opposes God’s plan or another person, and yes, even God Himself is at times the Satan.

To take a snapshot of Volume 3, Who’s The Devil Jesus Knew, is all we have time for in this introduction. Pick up a copy soon to find some of the long awaited answers to the Satan of the New Testament. In fact, as unorthodox as it might be for a book, I will happily refund your investment if you buy, read, and fail to see how Christianity’s Satan is a construct and in no way the Satan of the New Testament peoples.

Can A Scrutineer Be A Satan?

So in a snapshot we see that Jesus was indeed tempted in the wilderness, but God’s spirit “sent” Him there to be tested. In the entire career of Jesus, there were no stronger adversaries than the religious leaders. We discovered together that Jesus was tested by these satans on many occasions and it was these jealous, prided filled, and tenacious scrutineers who would test the Christ because they had an obligation to test any figure who appeared on the scene and was said to be a candidate for Messiah.

The list of dismantled iconic passages about Satan is exhaustive in V3. Readers found the cemetery confrontation with demon possession to be an encounter with wildly insane men. The Christ figure placed true thinking and love within their reach and these crazed cemetery dwellers grasped it, clung to it, attacked soldiers in the region, and adopted a life of following Jesus’ way. That the soldiers are spoken of as “swine” is no surprise when the cultural setting of the day is brought into view.

The mental anguish Jesus delivered the insaniacs from is spoken of as demon possession. In English and Greek, that term is starkly different from the simple Aramaic understanding of demon possession. To Christ’s mind, it held the meaning that a person was struggling with a mental illness. The adversary to Christ was the anguish caused by mental insanity…a condition that forced these social pariahs to take up residence in a cemetery. The long string of charlatans who passed through the congregation of crazies, supposing to be Jewish exorcists, could do nothing to ameliorate the anguish with their insufferable and often torturous cures. It took the right man at the right time with the right truth to liberate the insaniacs from their “demons”.

We also discussed in Volume 3, how casting demons into swine was not a literal possibility. If the swine were inhabited by demons then when the swine drowned in the sea, where did the demons go after their host was dead? Facts are, the “demons” were the crazy men in the cemetery who displayed prodigious strength at times. They eagerly attacked a patrolling regiment of Roman soldiers. A regiment known to be the Tenth Roman Regiment, who marched under their regimental symbol of, believe it or not, a swine.

Our astonishing discoveries led us to see many brilliant epiphanies. Epiphanies such as that men are deceived and tempted by other men; that being possessed with a devil means one is struggling to overcome a mental or physical disease; and that a woman with seven devils is a woman who had numerous issues and wrong thoughts that were removed because of the Messiah’s input into her life.

We encountered the logic that showed us “demons” has to be a term referring to men. In many cases, the demons admit Jesus is the Son of God who came in the flesh. That fact did not go unnoticed as we compiled proofs to show what demons are. In so doing, our examination led us to see that 1st John taught that any spirit who acknowledges that Christ came in the flesh is not of the satanic realm but is of God. Ergo, if demons are the men and women who had mental illnesses, then of course they could be cognizant of Christ’s divine connection and therefore not be evil supernatural satanic spirit demons.

There was so much more we covered in Volume 3 and we saw that time after time, the devils, demons, spirits, satans, and the like, amounted to nothing supernatural. The repeated message was one that man is the tempter, man is the deceiver, illness is the devil, false religion is the satan, false teachers are the demons, erroneous doctrine is the satan, a man’s desires to choose evil is a satan, a person who opposes another person is a satan. And on and on we found explanations for every instance that once was thought to be about an unseen spiritual foe. The very fact that there is no unseen spiritual foe allowed us to take command of our physical satans and demons. Attributes and action from humans that are far more subtle, far more manipulative, and far more clearly found by looking in the mirror than we have been taught by the Satan-fascinated religions found in most churches today.

The boy thrown into the fire; epilepsy not literal demons. The time Peter was called Satan by Yeshua; well this was an example of Christ defining “satan”. Peter was adverse to the things of God, thus Peter was Satan. The devil who steals the seed; is a human generated system of lies. Christ’s mention of seeing Satan fall like lighting, a positive affirmation that he knew false doctrine could not hold up to the truth He had sent the disciples out with. Error is the Satan He saw fall. Did the cosmic Satan really enter Judas or was the destructive thought to betray his Master the satan? Does a loving God really let a hate filled Satan destroy and steal, or is the false doctrines and false teachers the character who destroys, kills, and steals the truth from us? Did the Christ and His closest Hebrew friends really adopt a Greek and Persian view of Satan as a cosmic supernatural entity, or could it be possible that these men knew the satan of their writings and discussions to be the same as the satan of the Old Testament. We have found it is the latter. The satan and demon possession of the Gospels was no more than false doctrines, false teachers, mental illness, physical affliction, adversarial men, and persecuting oppressive government. You could be a satan, I could be a satan, my thinking, my friend, my religion, or my government can be a satan. And in over a thousand years, and after, scads of teachers affirming the traditional view of what Satan is, we have found that there is no better way to refute this age-old lie than to display the correct thinking on all things Satan. Misinformation, errors, mistranslations, and bald-faced lies that have been served up as facts for far too many generations. When we dig to the bottom of the pile, we soon see that the heap of inaccuracies loaded upon the clear facts are themselves the satan that we need to exorcise. After all…the traditional view of Satan is what stands in the way as an adversary to you and I finding the truth. By the time you flip the final page on this demon shattering work, you too will be able to enjoy a world without Satan.

The wait is over. In the next chapter, I am going to do something that goes against the format and style of how things flowed in the previous three volumes. You are well aware that when the idea Satan is not real comes up in some of your circle; you are met with a refutation that comes from the book of Revelation.

One will tell you that Revelation 20 speaks of Satan being thrown into the lake of fire. Another might bring up the statements in the Revelation about the Dragon being cast to Earth and a third of the stars being cast down with him; yet another may mention the graphic imagery of the ten horned, seven headed beast or when Satan is bound for a thousand years and then loosed. But are these images literal depictions of supernatural entities?

All these images and references have daunted the anti-Satan advocate for far too long. And these same images and references have caused the Satan believer to feel settled in their view that indeed, they think, Satan is real and is a horrific looking supernatural entity who rivals the most hideous, powerful, and sinister character from any Lord of The Rings stories in his ability to invoke fear and incite terror. It is for this and other reasons that the format of following the order of the biblical text will be forgone at this point. I will place before you, right out of the gate, the entire solution, explanation, and commentary to the Revelation. We are about to understand who or what the Satan, beast, dragon, devil and Old Serpent of Revelation are. Upon turning the next page you are about to enter the world of the Apocalypse. And if apocalypse is a Greek word that means unveiling, get ready to have the real satan of Revelation unveiled. There is no turning back for us once our eyes have begun to be opened and the Satan-free world stands in front of us, beckoning to step forward to truth and freedom.

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