The Truth Of Satan

(For the purposes of this message, I used the New International Reader’s Version of the Bible)

How many times have we been told something in our lives that are presented as pure truth, just to find out they are not true? Has anyone ever told you something that was “really for sure”, and then later you found out it was incorrect?

We receive many emails that tell us “facts” that are supposedly very true, yet when we go to one of the places online that delineate truth from fiction, we find out those “facts” are not true at all.

For instance, I received an email a while back that said President Bush had ancestors who were Muslim. And this email went on to give names of those relatives. Of course, this is not correct. Bush’s ancestors came from Europe, not the Middle East.

Another email keeps coming around saying that we need to contact the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) as quickly as possible, because they have been petitioned to shut down all religious broadcasting.

They have received letters by the thousands over the years, protesting this action. The trouble is, there has never been any petition before them to do any such thing. We have to be very careful what we believe, because most of it is not true at all.

And this same tendency is brought into our Christian beliefs. We know many things that, when investigated, just don’t prove true. For instance, much about what we know about the devil just isn’t reality. And that is what I want to talk to you about today.

I want to talk about three things that we know about the devil that, when taken to the Bible, end up being myths or legend, but not the truth.

The first thing we know as fact that turns up false is …

1. SATAN IS EVERYWHERE

I have had people tell me over the years they know Satan is in the middle of their marriage, or that Satan rules their homes, or that Satan spends all his time attacking them. Each of us tend to think that we are his primary targets, don’t we?

First of all, none of us are that important to him, until we start doing things that glorify Jesus to other people. That is when he, or his demons, starts trying to steal our focus from Jesus.

Satan cannot be in more than one place at one time. Only God can do that. And since God can be everywhere at once, He knows what is going on everywhere – all the time. You can keep no secrets from God.

GENESIS 1:1 tells us,

‘In the beginning, God created the earth.’

JOHN 1:1-3 talks about Jesus being the Word, and reads,

‘In the beginning, the Word was already there. The Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. All things were made through him. Nothing that has been made was made without him.

HEBREWS 4:13 says,

‘Nothing God created is hidden from him. His eyes see everything. He will hold us accountable for everything we do.

We have not been taught the clear and perfect truth of God’s word. Therefore, we have come up with beliefs about Satan that are very wrong. One of those beliefs is that Satan is on the same level as Jesus. That He is the equal to Jesus! There is no equal to Jesus, on earth or in heaven. Jesus stands supreme, as He is also God.

If you need to compare Satan to anyone, it would be more accurate to compare him to the archangel Michael. Both were God’s creation.

We picture Satan as being all red, carrying a pitchfork, and having horns, with a snarl on his face and having the eyes of a madman. Those stories date back to the 11th century, but do not date back to the Bible.

How did we happen to picture Satan like that? Scholars believe that this myth came about in steps. First of all, Satan is seen as red because that denotes the color of something that has been burned.

The pitchfork shows that he has the capacity to hurt us and cause us much damage. The horns represent our fear of mean animals who can attack us. And the snarling mouth and evil look in his eyes represent out of control evil hatred.

But that is not the picture the Bible paints of him.

In EZEKIEL it says that he was the model of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty. It says that on the day God created him, he made him beautiful.

So what do we know for sure about Satan so far? We know Satan was not here since the beginning of time, but that God created him. And when he created Satan, he made Satan to be perfect in beauty. No pitchforks. No red skin. No horns and certainly no crazy look in his eyes.