Chapter 2: Who is the real enemy and what does he want?

In order to gain insight into the contents of this book you need to understand certain things about your enemy – Satan. We will discuss those things in this chapter.

When you ask a typical person who is his enemy, his answer usually is some relative or neighbor or acquaintance that did him harm in the past. Some might even consider their own spouse or parent or child as their enemy!

But the real enemy is Satan. He is out to do us eternal harm. Nothing would please him more than to have us spend an eternity in Hell.

Satan is no ordinary enemy. He is the highest created being, very powerful, and very intelligent. The strategies and plans that he employs to ensure our eternal destruction are most devious, and unless we have God (the only Being more powerful than Satan) on our side we stand no chance against Satan.

Now here is the situation that Satan is in…

When God created Lucifer (who became Satan), He created him with three spiritual components: spirit, flesh, and the knowledge of good and evil. The spirit makes a being aware of God and able to communicate with God. The spirit also gives a being identity in the spiritual world (think of it as a unique number, like a Social Security Number). The flesh makes a being temptable i.e. desiring and able to do things that violate God’s moral law. The knowledge of good and evil makes a being accountable for violating God’s moral law. See Appendix C for more details on spiritual components.

If a being with these three components actually violates God’s moral law that being suffers the consequence of sin – eternal separation from God, aka Hell. Appendix A explains why.

As a result, when Lucifer became proud and wanted to be like God he was doomed to eternal separation from God. He didn’t like that one bit. So he tried to find a flaw with God’s logic for sending him to Hell.

Now every being that has a spirit is a spiritual being. God is a spiritual being too. God is Spirit, and He also has the knowledge of good and evil. But God cannot be tempted because He has no flesh. See Appendix E to see what I mean by ‘flesh’.

Satan’s contention is that God put him in an impossible situation. He contends that no being with flesh can stay without sin, and that the only reason why God hasn’t sinned is because God does not have flesh. As a result, Satan says that it would be unfair for God to send him to Hell because it is impossible for a being with flesh to not sin.

And his logic is correct! If it is indeed impossible for a being with flesh to not sin then it would be unfair for God to send Satan to Hell – because God gave Satan the flesh.

To disprove Satan, God became man (this man was Jesus, the Christ), just like you and me. Now man has three components too, just like Satan: spirit, flesh and the knowledge of good and evil – and therefore, so did Jesus. As a man, Jesus didn’t sin even once, thus proving to Satan that it is indeed possible for a being with flesh to not sin.

Consequently, Satan is defeated, and doomed to eternal separation from God. His time is running out. But he absolutely refuses to believe that Jesus came in the flesh and didn’t sin. As a result, he has gone around, through the centuries since Jesus came, trying to teach people that Jesus didn’t really come in the flesh as man, or that He did sin. Or better still – that Jesus didn’t exist at all!

Satan’s work has resulted in a lot of confusion about the nature of Jesus Christ. It has resulted in wrong doctrines. These doctrines (which I will describe in the next chapter) have found itself in the church through Satan’s ingenuity and deception.

Here’s how Satan did it…

Remember the four steps I mentioned regarding how to convince the typical Christian of your theology? Here they are again: first, show him your badge of authority (i.e. your seminary degree); second, show him a verse or more in the Bible to support your position; third, tell him that everyone in the church believes it; and fourth, tell him that this ‘truth’ is fundamental i.e. if you don’t believe it you are not an evangelical Christian but a heretic.

Satan accomplished the first step by getting the top leaders of the church to formulate a doctrine on the nature of Christ in A.D. 451. They met at the Council of Chalcedon. The doctrine was worded to look authentic but to be utter nonsense (we’ll examine it shortly). Thus he established the badge of authority.

Before establishing this badge of authority Satan first brought about confusion in the church by coming up with all kinds of theories about the nature of Christ. We’ll discuss those in the next chapter too. The church got tired of having to address all those theories and finally was desperate enough to formulate that one doctrine at the Council of Chalcedon.

For the second step, Satan threw in a few Scriptures to make the doctrine appear authentic, just like he threw a few Scriptures at Jesus when he tempted Jesus in the wilderness. You will find these Scriptures in theology textbooks and commentaries.

For the third step, Satan got the seminaries to teach this doctrine. The seminary professors taught it to the pastors-to-be and the Bible teachers-to-be. They in turn taught it to the congregation. This doctrine thus proliferated from generation to generation down through the centuries. Since everyone Christian believed it, it became easier to get the new converts to believe it too.

For the final step, Satan made adherence to the doctrine fundamental to evangelical Christianity. In other words, if you don’t believe this, you are to be considered a heretic, and to be excommunicated from the church.

Excommunication is a bad thing. It means no fame and fortune for the pastor. It means no friends and fellowship for the church member. No typical pastor wants to be known as a heretic because if he is known as a heretic then no one will come to his church and he will not have sufficient financial support. No typical Christian wants to be known as a heretic either because he wants to have his circle of friends and family in the church so that he can use their help in times of emergency.

Having tied the knot and tightened the noose on Christianity Satan sat back and laughed at us mere mortals for all of the centuries since A.D. 451.

Yes, believe it or not – truth is stranger than fiction!