Posts Tagged ‘Satan’

One of Satan’s Successful Campaign

Posted: February 19, 2020 in Christian
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Throughout the history of the human race, we can find multitudes of ways that Satan has tried to thwart the plan of God. There are the obvious and overt ways that we know in the bible, but what immediately came to mind when I thought about this subject was one way that Satan has tried to thwart the plan of God that is still continuing to this day. The way I am referring to is to sow derision, doubt and conflict within the Body of Christ.

All the different groups or denominations within Christianity, for the most part, are philosophically separated by seemingly insignificant differences. We find these differences begin to crop up in the first few years of The Way(1), as the group of people that followed the teachings of Christ were called in the book of Acts. Even in the very infancy of the Church, Satan was able to successfully insert false prophets and start to sow doubt and deception within the Christian movement. Small, subtle changes here and there, a doubt about the real meaning behind this passage or that passage and Satan’s ability to convince scholars and teachers that taking passages out of context is OK all resulted in the beginnings of the division of the Body of Christ. The letters to the Thessalonians and the Corinthians churches were penned by Paul partially to calm them and answer their nervous questions and doubts that were being whispered in their ears by false prophets and those intent in creating discord within their local congregations. Satan was also very successful in his campaign to deceive the early church fathers into questioning the meaning of the scriptures, which allowed them to start creating their own interpretations of the Word, which resulted in a more palatable form of religion for the leaders of Holy Roman Empire. The disgust with the end product of the religious/political superpower that these continued interpretations morphed into resulted in the protestant reformation movement in the sixteenth century.(2) Part of the problem that the reformation movement left us with is many of the reformed protestant religious entities that were formed didn’t take the reformation far enough, which has resulted in many of our ‘siblings’ in the Body of Christ still firmly believing in the long time Catholic view of allegorizing the scripture, just as they did in fourth century Constantinople to make the watered-down lessons and commandments of the Word of Our Lord easier for the masses to digest and accept, making them little less rigid, and a lot less ‘black and white’. Therefore many of our brethren teach traditional interpretation instead of what the scripture really says. To do this effectively, they have to do several things. One of the first things that needs to be done is to ignore the fact that the scriptures from Genesis to Revelation is a single, cohesive message system with a single stranded woven web of meaning and purpose about God, his people and his Son. Once this is accomplished, the rest is easy. From that point on, it becomes simple to take and chop the word of Our Lord up into individual sections that don’t relate to each other significantly or not at all to be able to build the traditions and religious philosophy the the church has replaced Israel as God’s chosen people referred to as replacement theology(3) that many of our brethren teach weekly from their pulpits as gospel.

This watered-down version of the gospel may pass inspection at the microscopic or planar level, but if you were to get high above it and inspect it from a distance, I believe you would see a nasty conglomeration of square pegs sticking out of round holes and non-matching puzzle pieces, hammered and taped together to form a Picasso style picture instead of a smooth flowing message system that easily fits and continues from end to end, the way the Holy Spirit wrote it and the way the Creator of All Things intended. This form of religious interpretation opens itself up to attack from Satan who can squeeze in between the gaps and cracks and, in my opinion, I’m afraid that is what happened to the early Church when it started using this formula in the fourth century to please the masses.

We as the Body of Christ are much like extremely dysfunctional siblings that are constantly fighting and squabbling over minor issues and irrelevant things to the point that most of our energies are absorbed in this in-fighting instead of taking the Word to the lost of the world. This has to be one of Satan’s more successful campaigns in his plan to thwart the plan of Our Lord.

Jim
02-19-20

1 Acts 9:2 and Acts 19:9, 23

2 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protestant_Reformation

3 http://www.gotquestions.org/replacement-theology.html

Did Satan Miss a Link to the Birth of the Messiah?

Posted: October 20, 2013 in Christian
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Anyone that has had exposure to the Christian religion is aware of the world’s greatest antagonist, Satan and the prominence as the number one bad guy throughout the bible.

Recently, while studying the bible, I have been examining some of Satan’s attempts to thwart the plan of God and I believe I have stumbled across an example where Satan may have missed one of the links and prophecies pointing to the birth of the Messiah. I am becoming convinced that Satan missed this link because the Holy Spirit excluded it from the official record (the Torah), though I think historical record and a little circumstantial evidence proves my point.

From the standpoint of mankind, Satan is an ultra-powerful supernatural being. The bible tells how Satan is an angel and we know from reading the scriptures that angels can wipe out scores of thousands of humans in one fell swoop (read 2 Kings 19:35 where an angel slew 185,000 Assyrians one night). However, that being said, Satan is a creation and is not a god and has limitations which includes the fact that God has to reveal something before Satan can know about it.

We read from the very beginning of the bible to the very end of this greatest historical novel of all times that Satan has attempted to destroy the lineage and the path of the Judean royal line throughout the scriptures to prevent Christ from being able to reign upon David’s throne and to claim the title of the Lion of the Tribe of Judah. Satan may be supernaturally powerful from our perspective, but he is not all-knowing and uses the holy word of our Lord as a prime source of knowledge to plan his attacks upon the royal line of God. Obviously, God understands this, but adds the information to the scriptures knowing full well Satan will use it in whatever manner he can to thwart the plan of salvation and at times it seems like he has succeeded, but in the end, God always prevails.

I truly believe that Satan missed having the knowledge of watching for the precise signs to point to the location and the time of the birth of The Christ and I feel the information that led the “wise men” to find the Messiah came directly from the prophet Daniel and the book of Daniel is where we first read about the Magi and it is a book that details an historical story line as well as a timeline that I feel is extremely exciting. You will find many links and article and posts about the possible history of the Magi that showed up in Jerusalem, but I know of no one else that has my viewpoint as to why these strangers from a different culture suddenly showed up (the reason for this simply could be that I haven’t looked hard enough).

As a child, knowing the story of Christ’s birth, I always wondered who these guys called the Magi (or wise men) were. I would ask others, but all anyone that I asked could say was they were wise men from the east and they would leave it at that, which meant that I was always left a bit unsatisfied with these answers, so I want to explore a little deeper into just who the Magi were.

Historical research indicates that the Magi were members of the Medeo-Persian Priesthood1 and we find that Daniel was chief of this priesthood according to Daniel chapter 4. Daniel 4:9 “Belteshazzar2, chief of the magicians, because I know that the Spirit of the Holy God [is] in you, and no secret troubles you, explain to me the visions of my dream that I have seen, and its interpretation. (NKJV) This scripture tells us Daniel held the office over these magicians to the court of Darius, the ruler of the known world. At that time in history, Daniel was probably the second or third most powerful man on the globe.

We also read in Daniel 6 the familiar story of the lion’s den. After Daniel leaves the lion’s den and is found unharmed, King Darius created a decree that was sent to all the nations of the earth stating that all nations under his rule must fear and give reverence to the God of Daniel (Daniel 6:25-28). To me, these scriptures seem to set up a series of conditions that gave Daniel the ability to spread the influence of the God of Israel and also importantly (and in my opinion) the specific prophecy he would receive about the birth of Christ in Daniel chapter 9. These conditions cited in the scripture indicate a link to the appearance of the Magi that suddenly appear unannounced in Judea (which creates much consternation and fear in Herod3) bringing gifts for the newborn Messiah. In my opinion, it wasn’t until after the Magi showed up in Jerusalem to request an audience with Herod, that Satan finally received his first clue as to where the baby Messiah was and he wasted no time in reacting, as we read about Herod sending out the command to kill all the male children within a certain age within the area of his rule (of course God already knew about this and had Joseph and Mary skedaddle with the baby Jesus in their arms for Egypt, which places them beyond the influence of Herod’s decree). To me, this is one of those events where the bible implies a Messianic prophecy that didn’t make it out of the Holy Spirit’s editing room for us to read, though Daniel seemingly knew the specifics of it and it seems he taught his dedicated followers to pass on this prophecy down through the centuries to their successors. Remember, Gabriel gave Daniel the specific day Christ would present himself as the Messiah and was told he would be crucified, and it is not a stretch of the imagination to assume he gave him a specific prophecy of the birth of our Savior also…kept out of the official record so Satan would be taken by surprise.

So what happened? The fact that five hundred years later this imposing procession of important foreigners (Magi from Parthia4) suddenly shows up at Herod’s doorstep in Jerusalem while following a special star5 and looking for the new born king of God’s chosen people, means they had to be there following some precise instructions, and the fact they were descendants of the Median Magi priesthood that was under the leadership of Daniel the prophet several centuries earlier, even though their nation worshiped strange gods, screams direct linkage to me.

Where am I going with this? My personal opinion is that Satan is totally familiar with the Holy Word and knows every word, every nuance, every prophecy, every covenant, every commandment and every screw-up of the Israelites in there. My thought is that this prophecy that guided Daniel to instruct the Magi to pass the prophecy down through their ranks from generation to generation was missed by Satan because it was left out of the record, causing him to ignore these pagan priests that are conveying the message of the expectation of a Jewish Messiah appearing under certain miraculous conditions to their following successions of priests. OK, if that’s true, why was it left out? We could throw out conjectures all day, but I believe this visit by the Magi gives us an indication, on a much smaller scale, of what celebrations should have been taking place in Israel if the Jews had paid attention to prophecy and had known to look for the Messiah, is one possibility. Another possibility is their visit was an end-run around Satan’s deception campaign, which in part, was designed to prevent such an announcement to be heralded, but the Magi succeeded at announcing to the Jewish leadership that the Messiah and King was among them. Or maybe it’s a combination of the two thoughts. Regardless whatever could have happened, the Jewish leadership were, once again, asleep at the wheel and ignored this event, which is only one of the most important events this creation has ever witnessed, and the single event that started the clock for the greatest love story ever lived, and the purpose of the creation.

Because Christ as the Messiah was rejected by the nation of Israel, The Lord turned his back on them as prophesied throughout the Torah, (Hosea’s prophecy is my favorite) which resulted in the catastrophe in 70 AD and the diaspora6 of the Jews.

I have a non-traditional view of the scripture, according to many of my acquaintances, so in my mind’s eye, I see God discussing with the others in the Trinity over steaming cups of nectar, his script for our universe before zapping us into existence. We all know what happened…Lucifer (who had become the Satan) threw a wrench into the works, apparently causing the Lord to rewrite the script of our complicated SIM game7, so to speak, even though I feel our Lord set up Satan so he would cause his own fall because of Satan’s addiction to the real killer, pride. I am always looking for patterns and, I guess conspiracies and one pattern that I see is; after the Jews turned chicken and refused to invade Canaan the first time, The Lord sent them wandering for thirty eight years before they were allowed to occupy the land. Fast-forward several hundred years and we have the Jewish nation reject God again by rejecting His Son. Thirty eight years later, the Romans destroyed the temple and massacred over a million Jews in the process of the siege and occupation of Jerusalem. I can’t help but wonder if this was simply a modified script from the original one I had imagined above, one where possibly the Jews accepted him and thirty eight years later, the chosen people, with Christ as their King, started the rule of the earth from Zion. Just as they had captured and occupied the promised land so many years ago.

In hindsight, we can look back and think, “what dorks, these guys had these prophecies about the Messiah, mainly the one from Daniel chapter nine, right there in front of them and they ignored it and see what it got them.”. Before we get all holier-than-thou, we need to look at ourselves. Heck, forget religion, here in America, our leaders ignore and reject our own constitution, they reject moral judgments and teachings, much less the teaching of the scriptures and we’ve only had a couple hundred years to do it in. At least Israel seemed to hold it together a few hundred years longer than that.

God Bless, Jim

1 http://ldolphin.org/magi.html

2 Belteshazzar was Daniel’s Persian name

3 There had to be many, many more than three Magi to cause the apoplexy that Herod seemed to demonstrate over seeing them

4 http://www.biblestudy.org/maps/parthian-empire-large-map.html

5 Numbers 24:17 tells of a star in prophecy, but after reading it in context, I don’t see the link to the prophecy of Christ’s birth…

6 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaspora

7 I personally think we are some sort of giant SIM game where our reality is all smoke and mirrors and the real reality is what we refer to as the ‘spirit world’. The apostle Paul supports that view in Ephesians 6:12

Characteristics of the Man of Sin…is he alive today?

Posted: August 22, 2012 in Christian
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I am going to make a bold statement here.

I believe the Antichrist (I John 2:22), (which mean instead of Christ or opposed to Christ in the Greek1), is the most popular title of the most famous tool of Satan, as well as Satan’s last hurrah in his vain attempt to thwart the final outcome of the world (as he is referred to in the the first and second epistles of John) is possibly alive today.

If the Profane and Wicked Prince of Israel (Ezekiel 21:25-27) is a natural born human being, he would have to be alive and ready at a moment’s notice, to perform the role that has been mentioned throughout the bible of the Coming World Leader2 outlined for us in the scriptures. I conceivably picture the Man of Sin (II Thessalonians 2:13) (or as he is referred to in Latin, the ‘Vicar of Christ‘3, which opens up a whole new can of worms), as a type of ‘sleeper agent’ ready to activate at a moment’s notice because the scriptures say Christ will return ‘as a thief in the night’ to those who are unprepared for his coming, as we are told in I Thessalonians 5:2-44. The most popular word for The Enemy (Psalms 55:3) is derived from 1 John chapters 2 & 4. I believe in chapter 2:18-19 where he mentions plural antichrists he is referring to people that learned of Christ but rejected Him or, through the spirit of Satan, pretended to believe and chose to intermingle with them but for the purpose of sowing discord and disinformation about Our Lord. It is a couple of chapters later we find the popular reference to Satan’s man which I think John is using as another title to the Head over many countries (Psalms 110:6) in I John 4:1-35.

Satan doesn’t know what the interval is between the harpazo6 and the beginning of the seventieth week7 is, so Satan has to have his Spoiler (Isaiah 16:4) ready and waiting in the wings to strike at any time. Satan has had to have had this Branch of the terrible ones (Isaiah 25:5) ready throughout every generation since the sixty-nine weeks were fulfilled, if the unclean spirit (Matthew 12:43) is human. For that to happen the Son of Perdition (II Thessalonians 2:13) has to be alive now. This means that Satan has needed to have his Man of the Earth (Psalms 10:18) ready to act when the time comes. Or does he?

I think there is another scenario that we need to consider. There is a possibility that the Man of lawlessness (II Thessalonians 2:13 NIV) will be one of the stars that fell (fallen angels) as we are told in Revelation 12:4 And his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven, and did cast them to the earth: and the dragon stood before the woman which was ready to be delivered, for to devour her child as soon as it was born. (KJV) and he will just ‘appear’ on the scene. It says a third of the stars (which is a typical idiom for angels) go with Satan. All throughout the bible there have been visitations by angels that spoke, visited and dined with people mentioned in Hebrews 13:2 Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares. (KJV). Why should these visitations be limited to only the ‘good’ angels? Possibly the false teachers and plural antichrists that John mentions could be these fallen angels sent to disrupt and sow discord and confusion as we see in 1 John 2:18-198. This may be a thought that could be worth cultivating and researching.

Is the Antichrist a Jew? After all, The Prince who is to come will enforce (or confirm) the covenant concerning the temple in Jerusalem for seven years9. I could do additional research and bring forth viable arguments both ways and cite Revelations where it speaks of the Adversary (Lamentations 4:11-12) enforcing the covenant with Israel, I could cite Daniel 11:37 that states he will reject the God of his fathers, there are those that put forth articles saying this is a bunch of anti-Semitic rantings, but let’s allow Christ to settle the argument. Christ says in John 5:42-44 about the Jews in the end times that they will receive the Violent Man Psalms 140:110. I believe that Christ is saying the Jews will receive this Idol Shepard (Zechariah 11:16-17) as a false messiah as prophesied in Deuteronomy 18:15-2211, so will he be (is he) a Jew? I really have no idea, so I will defer to Christ’s authority on this one (and all of the rest, also).

God Bless,

Jim

1 http://biblehub.com/greek/500.htm

2 http://www.khouse.org/articles/1995/80/ , 9th paragraph

3 http://www.aloha.net/~mikesch/666.htm

4 I Thessalonians 5:2-4 For yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night. For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape. But ye, brethren, are not in darkness, that that day should overtake you as a thief. (KJV)

5 I John 4:1-3 Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits, whether they are of God; because many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this you know the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God, and every spirit that does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is not of God. And this is the [spirit] of the Antichrist, which you have heard was coming, and is now already in the world. (NKJV)

6 https://www.blueletterbible.org/lang/lexicon/lexicon.cfm?t=kjv&strongs=g726

7 http://www.khouse.org/articles/2004/552/

8 1 John 2:18-19 Little children, it is the last time: and as ye have heard that antichrist shall come, even now are there many antichrists; whereby we know that it is the last time. They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would [no doubt] have continued with us: but [they went out], that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us. (KJV)

9 http://biblehub.com/daniel/9-27.htm

10 Psalms 140:1 But I know you, that ye have not the love of God in you. I am come in my Father’s name, and ye receive me not: if another shall come in his own name, him ye will receive. How can ye believe, which receive honour one of another, and seek not the honour that [cometh] from God only? (KJV)

11 Deuteronomy 18:15-22 The LORD thy God will raise up unto thee a Prophet from the midst of thee, of thy brethren, like unto me; unto him ye shall hearken; According to all that thou desiredst of the LORD thy God in Horeb in the day of the assembly, saying, Let me not hear again the voice of the LORD my God, neither let me see this great fire any more, that I die not. And the LORD said unto me, They have well [spoken that] which they have spoken. I will raise them up a Prophet from among their brethren, like unto thee, and will put my words in his mouth; and he shall speak unto them all that I shall command him. And it shall come to pass, [that] whosoever will not hearken unto my words which he shall speak in my name, I will require [it] of him. But the prophet, which shall presume to speak a word in my name, which I have not commanded him to speak, or that shall speak in the name of other gods, even that prophet shall die. And if thou say in thine heart, How shall we know the word which the LORD hath not spoken? When a prophet speaketh in the name of the LORD, if the thing follow not, nor come to pass, that [is] the thing which the LORD hath not spoken, [but] the prophet hath spoken it presumptuously: thou shalt not be afraid of him. (KJV)

How many different names of Satan’s man did I use? 17

How many different titles of the Antichrist in the scriptures?  33 https://www.khouse.org/topical_bible study/antichrist/

 

 

The Nephilim, Lessons from Enoch and Lessons from Noah and the Flood

Posted: August 22, 2012 in Christian
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I know I probably can’t do this justice, but I decided to tackle some subject matter that highly interest me and the patterns that they seem to represent. This subject covers the time between the creation and the Flood of Noah, and deals with some controversial beings called the Nephilim. To those that have no idea what Nephilim are…here’s a link to start with (there are many, many more references that could be cited, but maybe this link will help you start your own in-depth investigation into this eerie subject) http://www.nwcreation.net/nephilim.html

I like patterns. I look for patterns to assist me with understanding and remembering thoughts, items and concepts whether at work or at home. Therefore, I see patterns within the scriptures that I believe were intentionally woven into the fabric of the Holy Word to allow us to tie events and concepts together for our edification, our remembrance and our worship. With that in mind, I wish to begin this topic with some patterns I see represented in the bible. In my mind, I feel that the Nephilim represent Satan and sin, and that Enoch represents the saved children of God and Noah represents the remnant being saved from the judgment of an evil, unrepentant world. So, let’s see if I can tie these thoughts and patterns together.

To start at the beginning of the scriptures, the Holy Spirit tells us in Romans that Adam was a model, or a type for Jesus. Romans 5:14 Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those who had not sinned according to the likeness of the transgression of Adam, who is a type of Him who was to come. (NKJV)

I remember when I first read this I thought, “hold on, how in the world is Adam, who fell, like Christ?”. I owe the clarification of this comment to Chuck Missler who explained it in one of the 40,000 recordings he has made (OK, maybe not 40,000, but he has made a lot of fascinating instructional and inspirational recordings…). He explained it this way; Adam and Eve lived a guileless, perfect existence in a perfect environment, but Eve was deceived by Satan and because of this deception she chooses to defy God. Adam, knowing he would suffer along with her, (God told them they would die) made the conscious decision to stay with her, therefore taking on her sin. This caused their existence to radically change and the curse of death was heaped upon them, as well as the environment in which they lived. Christ chose to become human and to be born in our cursed existence and take upon himself our sin of death, to provide a pathway for us and creation to throw off the curse of death and re-establish the perfect world again in the end, thus reversing the curse that began with Adam and Eve. When explained this way, the connection between Adam and Christ makes perfect sense.

OK, so we know that the scriptures are full of patterns and types for us to look for and digest, so we can understand the meanings of them and apply the meaning to our lives. Let’s look at a few that I feel tie together the Nephilim, Enoch and the Flood.

1st Pattern…The Nephilim. I learned in history class about Greek and Roman gods. It seemed each and every one had superhuman strengths, they were huge imposing creatures that struck fear in the hearts of mere mortals, similar to the superheroes that we read about in comic books or watch on the silver screen. When I was a kid I never would have imagined that the basis of these legends had their root in the history of mankind and was recorded in the Word of God. Genesis, Deuteronomy, Numbers, Joshua, Samuel, Chronicles and Ezekiel1 most have references to these aberrant humans that were the result of the union of fallen angels2 and human females. It is very easy to infer from looking at the Hebrew meaning of the passages that the genetic code of all the offspring and their descendants would have been altered, corrupting the purity (or perfection) of the DNA of the children of the Lord (which would eventually become the Israelites) if they had been allowed to intermingle. I feel this was an early attempt by the original adversary, Satan, to corrupt the DNA code of man and prevent the future birth of the perfect human, Christ. For this reason, the only way to accurately insure that corruption of the line didn’t happen would have been to reformat the Earth, so to speak…hence, Noah.

2nd Pattern…While all this attempt to corrupt the human genomes by Satan though the Nephilim was taking place around the globe, there was a seventh generation descendant of Adam named Enoch that we are told in Genesis 5:22 and again in verse 24 walked with God for three hundred years after the birth of his son, Methuselah at the age of sixty-five. There is a Jewish tradition that Enoch was born on the 6th of Sivan3 which is the Jewish Feast of Weeks, or as we know it, the Day of Pentecost and we are told in Genesis 5:24 that three hundred sixty-five years later the Lord took him, or translated him, and according to Jewish tradition, he was translated also on his birthday (what a present!). The parallel between Enoch and the Church jumps right out at me…both were ‘born’ on Pentecost, Enoch was born amid a world of decay and corruption but found favor with God and followed his commandments and so subsequently God snatched Enoch from the sin and corruption of the world before he destroyed it. We are told in I Thessalonians 14:16 and 17 that the Church will be caught up to be with the Lord, just like Enoch was.

3rd Pattern…The days of Noah were dim days indeed for the Earth. Satan had, successfully it seemed, corrupted the line of man with the Nephilim so the birth of a pure Lord born of the line of David wouldn’t be able to take place. Genesis 6 speaks of this tale of woe where starting with verse two the Holy Spirit tells us that Sons of God (‘ĕlôhı̂ym)4 came down to co-mingle and produce offspring with the daughters of man (‘âdâm)4 and the product of those unions were the Nephilim, or ‘giants’ as the modern translations render them. Primarily because of this corruption of the human race, God decided to destroy life on the Earth. However, Genesis 6:8 is a short but very sweet verse to our ears because it simply says but Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord (KJV). Because Noah found favor with the Lord and his gene pool was pure (or perfect), The Lord chose to keep Noah, his family and male and female of all flesh safe from destruction as he wiped the impure seed of Satan’s attempt at destruction of the race of man from the face of the Earth. What are the lessons to be learned from Noah? Noah is a model of the remnant of the Children of Israel as we see in Isaiah 11:11, Jeremiah 23:3, Ezekiel 11:17, Micah 2:12 and Romans 9:27 which will be protected and saved from the judgment of the Earth by fire, just as the Flood was a judgment of the Earth by water.

Looking at the history of mankind before the flood, we see that the patterns there are exemplar to the history of mankind after the flood. Perhaps we should really take a close look at the lessons God has laid out for us and dig deep to find the gems and jewels of information hidden beneath the surface of these first chapters of the Book of Genesis.

Jim Bussell

P.S. While researching this I came across some interesting websites pointing to the Book of Enoch. Apparently it was discovered that the Ethiopians weren’t highly influenced by the Early Church leaders thus their bibles retain some characteristics of some of the early canons before the Early Church Fathers did their editing, resulting in the Book of Enoch being included in their scriptures. Supposedly the passages that Jude quotes about Enoch’s prophecies in Jude 14 are found there implying that he was familiar with the text. Also fragments of the Book of Enoch are included in the Dead Sea Scroll remains and, if we can believe the carbon 14 dating, these copies were ascribed around 200 BC. It seems most scholars believe the Book of Enoch was not written by Enoch himself, but it retains a good enough pedigree, that a healthy biblical library maybe should include one as historical reference. The Book of Enoch was translated from the Ethiopian text in 1906. Here is one interesting website: http://exodus2006.com/ENOCH.HTM

1 Genesis 6, Numbers 13, Deuteronomy 3, Joshua 14 & 15, II Samuel 20 and I Chronicles 20

2 fallen angels = sons of God. All of the earliest writings, as well as the Kaballah refer to sons of God as angels. It wasn’t until the 2nd century AD did a reference to sons of Seth appear in the writings of an early church father, Augustine. To consider the sons of God as righteous men, doesn’t really play in my mind as the scriptures tell us that the offspring of this union were giants, or when you look at Strong’s definition (H5303) they were not only giants, but were tyrants, bullies. You may have some children that are badly behaved, but to have aberrant offspring, there has to be something else in play, other than human to human unions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sons_of_God

3 http://www.khouse.org/articles/1994/101/

4 from Strong’s Concordance courtesy of E-Sword

 

 

A historical snapshot of Satan from Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28

Posted: August 22, 2012 in Christian
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I decided to share some thoughts I have gleaned from reading Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28 and give a quick rundown on a few things, using a macro view, that I see in these two complimentary chapters of these fascinating books.

My overall assumption from reading Isaiah chapter 14 is the Lord starts with a broad stroke and then narrows it a bit in focus. It seems He starts with Israel in the end-time, the last days, looking back upon the author of their oppression and trouble who has been defeated. A personage that The Lord refers to as the king of Babylon. He then narrows his scope and we find He is taking about Satan, giving an account of his mistreatment of, not only Israel, not only the people, but of all the creation. The Lord then continues with an account of Lucifer’s fall because of his pride and arrogance against the one that created him and then The Lord spells out, in no uncertain terms what he has in mind for Satan and The Lord’s contempt for him comes through rather plainly as he spells out his eternal sentence for his iniquity. The narrative continues once again about the creation and the burden that has been lifted from it.

What about Ezekiel 28? In this passage I see The Lord referring to Satan again as a king, this time king of Tyre, another earthly kingdom. The Lord starts this time with the beginnings of Satan and the esteem he seemed to have held in The Lord’s eyes. He continues about the pride and fall of Satan because of Lucifer’s vanity and how The Lord it seems, paraded the fallen Lucifer before the other ranking angels, cherubim, I assume as a poster child of his sin of vanity so that they could gaze upon him with derision and then cast him down upon the earth so all his equals could look on him in horror.

Before I continue, I am going to say that Act 17:11 is in full effect here, for what is see when I combine these two passages is purely conjecture on my part and could simply be the harvest of an active imagination.

From what I read from these two passages, I see this scenario; Satan is referred to as a king of two earthly kingdoms in these passages. He is held in contempt and paraded before kings and those that knew him. That tells me that there is a version of a ruling hierarchy in heaven. We already know that because of the fact that The Lord is the ruler of all things and those that are subjugated to him and Christ, including these cherubim kings…and Satan was one of these cherub kings. In my thinking, if there are kings, there are kingdoms. OK, what was Satan’s kingdom? The theme in Isaiah 14 seems to include a repeated reference to the freedom the earth also feels with the removal of Satan in verses 7, 8 and 25. My conjecture is Satan was given the earth as his kingdom to oversee. Satan’s pride and vanity caused him to attempt to elevate himself as God’s equal, an act that caused him to be cast out of heaven and into the creation he was ruling over which he had already corrupted and because of his corruption, a creation he caused to die by the introduction of entropy1

We also learn that Satan was cast down, along with a third of the angels into this creation and after he introduced iniquity into it it has been groaning from the burden of Satan until it’s release as the above verses indicate. Satan also apparently has limited powers for we can infer elsewhere in the bible that the tree of life is guarded by a cherub to prevent Satan from partaking of it and gaining immortality. I assume this because it wouldn’t take a super-angel like a cherub to guard it from Adam…however it would take an equal of Satan to guard it from him.

What about the idea of kings in the heavenly realm? I infer from this that there are other universes being watched over and ruled by other cherubim kings that probably are buzzing happily along, unaware of the bitter stench and ooze of the corruption caused by Satan that is emanating from this one.

God Bless

Jim Bussell

1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy_%28information_theory%29

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