Tag: Devil

What Is Satan?

The post explores the biblical figure of Satan, discussing his nature, identities, and presence in both Heaven and Earth, including his manifestation as the King of Tyre. It argues that Satan is not merely a myth but a complex being with significant influence over human history and actions, rooted in scriptural evidence.

Satan is a name found in several places in the Bible and many places in popular culture. He had some pseudonyms: the Devil, Lucifer, the Deceiver, the Accuser, Beelzebub, among others. I would like to deal with the question of what is this being. We will only touch on such tangential questions as what is he like, what can he do, and where is he.

Let’s start with a prominent assumption: Satan is just a myth and a way to personify evil. Not many people want Satan to be a real, thinking, active being. Without direct, obvious interaction it is pretty easy to dismiss a real Satan. Even the majority of Christians do that. The intel that we have has to come ultimately out of revelation from God. Otherwise, we are unlikely to know. While Satan isn’t a primary theme of Scripture, he shows up more than you might think. The context is always personal. It does not seem to be talking about evil showing up as a concept. Is it mythical? Suspend that thought for moment.

To get at what Satan actually is, first we must see where he can be present. Frequently, Satan is depicted as being in Heaven, like in the challenge to God to test Job (Job 1:7). He is also shows up on Earth, like in the Garden of Eden and others. He does seem to be able to either disguise himself or to occupy a human being (2 Corinthians 11:14, Luke 22:3). With that information I would like us to consider a passage that doesn’t use “Satan” by name.

11 Moreover, the word of the Lord came to me: 12 “Son of man, raise a lamentation over the king of Tyre, and say to him, Thus says the Lord God:

“You were the signet of perfection,
    full of wisdom and perfect in beauty.
13 You were in Eden, the garden of God;
    every precious stone was your covering,
sardius, topaz, and diamond,
    beryl, onyx, and jasper,
sapphire, emerald, and carbuncle;
    and crafted in gold were your settings
    and your engravings.
On the day that you were created
    they were prepared.
14 You were an anointed guardian cherub.
    I placed you; you were on the holy mountain of God;
    in the midst of the stones of fire you walked.
15 You were blameless in your ways
    from the day you were created,
    till unrighteousness was found in you.
16 In the abundance of your trade
    you were filled with violence in your midst, and you sinned;
so I cast you as a profane thing from the mountain of God,
    and I destroyed you, O guardian cherub,
    from the midst of the stones of fire.
17 Your heart was proud because of your beauty;
    you corrupted your wisdom for the sake of your splendor.
I cast you to the ground;
    I exposed you before kings,
    to feast their eyes on you.
18 By the multitude of your iniquities,
    in the unrighteousness of your trade
    you profaned your sanctuaries;
so I brought fire out from your midst;
    it consumed you,
and I turned you to ashes on the earth
    in the sight of all who saw you.
19 All who know you among the peoples
    are appalled at you;
you have come to a dreadful end
    and shall be no more forever.”

Ezekiel 28:11-19 (ESV)

So is this lament about Satan or the King of Tyre at Ezekiel’s time? I think the answer is “yes”. Satan either disguised himself or possessed a person and was the King of Tyre. I say this because much of this story could not apply to a normal person and it then gives part of Satan’s backstory. The end (v.18b-19) could apply to Satan as manifested as the King. It could also be prophetic of Satan’s ultimate fate.

What does it tell us? That Satan is a cherub. Cherub’s are not fat, little, baby angels that dispense toilet paper. The word means “living one”. Ezekiel uses that term in Ezekiel 1 as he describes the creatures that accompany God. It is also picked up in Revelation 4. In Isaiah’s vision of heaven in Isaiah 6, he uses the term “seraphim” or “burning ones”. This is just how they look to Isaiah. They are clearly the same creatures: four faces, four to six wings, what looks like eyes on their wings. In fact cherubim have wings, angels are never said to have wings; but it seems impossible to get people or AI to get that popular depiction out of their heads. Cherubim and Seraphim are synonyms. They are not angels. This is very restricted club. A limited creation by God. There seems to be just four in Isaiah, Ezekiel and Revelation. Satan would make a fifth.

Was or is Satan nasty looking? No, very beautiful, at least at first. Satan wasn’t evil from the start either. He was a creature of freewill and invented rebellion against God. It is important to note that Satan isn’t an equivalent of God in power, but just evil, even if he momentarily thought he was. Isaiah 14 has a similar passage. This one nominally against the King of Babylon.

Sheol beneath is stirred up
    to meet you when you come;
it rouses the shades to greet you,
    all who were leaders of the earth;
it raises from their thrones
    all who were kings of the nations.
10 All of them will answer
    and say to you:
‘You too have become as weak as we!
    You have become like us!’
11 Your pomp is brought down to Sheol,
    the sound of your harps;
maggots are laid as a bed beneath you,
    and worms are your covers.

12 “How you are fallen from heaven,
    O Day Star, son of Dawn!
How you are cut down to the ground,
    you who laid the nations low!
13 You said in your heart,
    ‘I will ascend to heaven;
above the stars of God
    I will set my throne on high;
I will sit on the mount of assembly
    in the far reaches of the north;
14 I will ascend above the heights of the clouds;
    I will make myself like the Most High.’
15 But you are brought down to Sheol,
    to the far reaches of the pit.

Isaiah 14:9-15 (ESV)

While this passage could easily be understood as describing the delusional fantasies of the King of Babylon, it also could be describing a Satan possessed man. The human King of Babylon ends up in Sheol (you can search above for “Sheol” in this blog), but a bit a Satan’s backstory is revealed. He thought he could be God. Is that naïveté, stupidity, or pride? Cherubim seem to have extraordinary powers, but they are no where near God in that category. Satan is not the evil equivalent of Jesus either as the Mormons proclaim.

In Revelation 12, Satan is cast to Earth and banished from Heaven in connection with the victory of Jesus. We do not have a comprehensive report on what he can or cannot do. What pushes him out the realm of myth for me is not only the consistent talk all through Scripture of Satan being an actual, created being; but it is also the horrid history of mankind.

Humans are capable of great evil all by ourselves, but I doubt that we would reach the depths that we have gone without significant outside help. Satan can possess, manifest and influence with great effectiveness. It would not surprise me if the nastiest characters in human history were either Satan in disguise, possessed by Satan, or under extreme influence. I don’t think evil could hold together as a system, movement, or institution the way that it has without such help.

Am I being superstitious or just ignorant of our capacity for evil? Again, I defer to Scripture. Society has swung from finding Satan under every rock to the opposite extreme of dismissing his existence. The truth is likely in between.

Where Is Satan?

Many people, including many Christians, regard Satan as a mythical being. It is right to say that Satan is not mentioned often in the Bible. Should he be? Need he be? The Bible makes us aware that such a being exists, but it is not about him. Satan is not the equivalent of God. Satan is a thinking, powerful, personal being–not just the personification of evil. Satan is the originator of rebellion within God’s creation. He is created by God as well. Both Jesus and the Gospel writers refer to Satan. Where is he now and what is his impact on our eternity?

We first see Satan in the Garden of Eden, which was on Earth. He tempts Eve, then Adam to question the honesty of God, and floats the idea that being like God was achievable for humans. That was the bait that sank the hook. The hook was the vast alteration of humans and all creation by the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. It seems mythy (my word–so you can’t use it for Scrabble), but Jesus does not cast doubt on the book of Genesis, so I will accept it as historical. Could it be real? Why not? An being of advanced being of great knowledge and power could create the means to genetically alter two human beings with direct contact. That we can almost do. How he manages to alter the rest of creation is more of a mystery.

Satan had access to Earth, now he held dominion over it. Evil and death would be the norm. In the rest of the Old Testament, you only see Satan twice for sure and possible two more times. In Job and in Zechariah you see Satan in Heaven as an accuser. In Job, he also has access to Earth as a disrupter and tempter. Two other “maybe it’s Satan” passages tell his backstory. Isaiah 14:9-16 and Ezekiel 28:14-19 do not refer to Satan directly, but rather the king of Babylon and the King of Tyre. The descriptions seem too much for a human. Could these men have been possessed by Satan himself or even been incarnations of Satan? If so, we learn that Satan is a cherubim/seraphim and that his downfall was essentially pride and wanting to be God. Sound familiar?

The arrival of Jesus, the incarnate Son of God, changes things. Satan was still the dominate spiritual force on Earth, but he is no match against the Son of God, except perhaps in the fact that Jesus has human flesh. The goal of Jesus is to fulfill God’s law for all of humanity and to suffer the required punishment for sin, at least the demand for God to forsake (remove from His presence entirely), all humanity. The counter move for Satan must have been to get Jesus to fail or quit. Killing Jesus was attempted via King Herod, via Jesus himself during Jesus’ formal temptation, and lastly through the crucifixion. Did Satan understand that killing Jesus at the crucifixion was playing right into God’s hands? I think he figured it out, but too late.

Revelation speaks of Satan being driven from Heaven. This is somehow connected to Jesus’ work on Earth and likely Jesus’ death:

7 Now war arose in heaven, Michael and his angels fighting against the dragon. And the dragon and his angels fought back, 8 but he was defeated, and there was no longer any place for them in heaven. 9 And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world—he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him.

Revelation 12:7-9 (ESV)

So Satan no longer has access to Heaven. Why would he in the first place? It doesn’t say, but I would surmise that it had something to do with Satan knowing that God wanted to save humans and Satan using that as leverage to delay is own judgment.

Satan is cast to Earth. Again, why? It seems that at least some of Satan’s angelic followers are thrown into “prison” :

4 For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell[a] and committed them to chains[b] of gloomy darkness to be kept until the judgment;

2 Peter 2:4 (ESV)

I left the footnote annotation in this quote because it matters. Both the ESV and KJV choose the word “hell”, but the Greek word is different from any other in the Bible. I think “Gehenna” refers to what we think of as Hell–the post-Judgment Day place of eternal punishment. This is not “Sheol or Hades” either. They refer to the post death, pre-Judgment Day destination for human condemnation. This word is “Tartarus”, which is borrowed from Greek mythology. It was a prison for souls or specifically for the Titans. Here Peter uses it for a place that is possibly equated to the “abyss” found in Luke 8:31. Why isn’t Satan there? Instead, it appears that he is here with us.

Revelation 20:1-3 holds out this information:

Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven, holding in his hand the key to the bottomless pit (Abyss) and a great chain. 2 And he seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years, 3 and threw him into the pit, and shut it and sealed it over him, so that he might not deceive the nations any longer, until the thousand years were ended. After that he must be released for a little while.

Revelation 20:1-3 (ESV)

The timing of this is greatly debated and beyond the scope of this blog. It would appear that Satan himself or at least some aspect of his power or following is still at work influencing the affairs of mankind. How much of the evil in this world is our own doing and how much can we say, “The Devil made me do it?” is unknown.

Satan’s final disposition is most relevant to the topic of this blog. In Revelation 20:7-10, we get the end of it:

 And when the thousand years are ended, Satan will be released from his prison 8 and will come out to deceive the nations that are at the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them for battle; their number is like the sand of the sea. 9 And they marched up over the broad plain of the earth and surrounded the camp of the saints and the beloved city, but fire came down from heaven and consumed them, 10 and the devil who had deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and sulfur where the beast and the false prophet were, and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever.

Revelation 20:7-10 (ESV)

Cartoons and even great works of art can depict Satan as the ruler of Hell, joyfully tormenting the damned of mankind. That is not the case. Satan suffers with the damned. To be forsaken by God is a torment even for God’s first and greatest enemy.

Satan is on a misery loves company campaign. God is still saving people with the Gospel, and Satan is still opposing it using every avenue at his disposal. There is no need for you to share his fate.