Every man desires to do good, to gain approval from God within his deepest soul, yet the actual daily path of how to accomplish this often alludes us all. What is Good? What is Evil? Are we pleasing God? What is God’s will? Down this path comes the inevitable, “What is the meaning, or the ultimate plan, for life?”
The following little story, here given only in excerpts, (although I urge the reader to procure the original and read it in total; here is one internet copy of Gibran's Satan), tackles these questions head-on in a bold, dramatic, and eye-opening manner. We start with Father Samaan, a Catholic priest working in Arabia, who finds a dying man in a ditch. That dying man turns out to be none other than Satan himself, and as the dying man pleads for his life, the good priest has to decide what to do with him.
Since it is a spiritual fact that all inspiration comes from one of two sources — Heaven, or the Deceiver — we are going to look at this poem-story and find out where exactly Gibran was getting his inspiration. If from Heaven, then we should get some good insights into Satan from a true point of view. If from the Deceiver, then... well, Satan will tell us all about himself won’t he?
The following excerpts are taken from Gibran’s ‘Satan’:
...[Father Samaan] heard a painful cry emerging from a ditch at the side of the road. He stopped and looked in the direction of the voice, and saw an unclothed man lying on the ground. Streams of blood oozed from deep wounds in his head and chest. He was moaning painfully for aid, saying, “Save me, help me. Have mercy on me, I am dying.”Satan went on to give a very long speech about how cool he is, but here are some highlights:
Father Samaan came close to the man, knelt, and stared at him; but he saw a strange face with contrasting features; he saw intelligence with slyness, ugliness with beauty, and wickedness with softness. He withdrew to his feet sharply, and exclaimed, “Who are you?”
With a fainting voice, the dying man said, “Fear me not, Father, for we have been strong friends for long.”
And the Father reprimanded, “You are a lying impostor! A dying man should tell the truth. I have never seen your evil face in my entire life. Tell me who you are, or I will suffer you to die, soaked in your escaping life.” And the wounded man moved slowly and looked into the clergyman’s eyes, and upon his lips appeared a mystic smile; and in a quiet, deep and smooth voice he said, “I am Satan.”
Upon hearing the fearful word, Father Samaan uttered a terrible cry that shook the far corners of the valley...
“I am the enraged and mute tempest who agitates the minds of man and the hearts of women.” ...Father Samaan’s reply to this long and passionate speech:
“I am the inspiration of falsehood, slander, treachery, deceit and mockery, and if these elements were to be removed from this world, human society would become like a deserted field in which naught would thrive but thorns of virtue. I am Satan everlasting.
“I am the father and mother of sin, and if sin were to vanish, the fighters of sin would vanish with it, along with their families and structures.
“I am the heart of all evil. Would you wish for human motion to stop through cessation of my heartbeat? Would you accept the result after destroying the cause? I am the cause!”
“I know now what I had not known an hour ago. Forgive my ignorance. I know that your existence in this world creates temptation, and temptation is a measurement by which God adjudges the value of human souls. It is a scale which Almighty God uses to weigh the spirits. I am certain that if you die, temptation will die, and with its passing, death will destroy the ideal power which elevates and alerts man.Bravo, Father Samaan.
“You must live, for if you die and the people know it, their fear of hell will vanish and they will cease worshipping, for naught would be sin. You must live, for in your life is the salvation of humanity from vice and sin.
“As to myself, I shall sacrifice my hatred for you on the altar of my love for man.”
The Dilemma
Who is Satan?
What role does he play in the scheme of things?
Is he truly indispensable to the Plans of God, necessary for the Salvation of Mankind?
Did God make Satan as ‘part of the plan’ and does God use Satan as one of His angels?
Is there really a little evil in everything good, and a little good in everything evil?
For centuries, the role of Satan in the universe has remained a mystery to Man. People ask why he exists, if his only role is to torment humanity. Why did God create him in the first place? The Jews and most other religions insist that God knew that Satan would fall into evil before He created him, which is certainly true. But if God knew that Satan would try to destroy the world, why did He allow him to exist?
It follows logically that God must have had a purpose for the fallen Satan to fulfill, a vital role which Satan must perform. If so, then Satan’s evil actions are actually within the will of God, cannot be condemned, and must not be interfered with or combated.
Of course, this conclusion assumes that God condones evil. Or even, by willfully abetting the murderer himself, has become an accessory to Satan’s crimes.
Does God sin? Is God a murderer?
At this point, the mind humbly admits that it cannot fathom these ‘deep’ things, and quits the subject. Why? Because logic has just failed. There is no logic to the thought that Satan is under God’s express permission to perform evil in the world, and without logic, the mind cannot comprehend it. However, this very conclusion seems so easily true to the soul, and seems to be upheld by such verses as Job 1:12. What is the real answer?
I believe a lot of this confusion can be solved by just analyzing Gibran’s lovely little story here. But we have to break it down bit by bit, looking at one claim and fact at a time, to get the whole picture. Let’s start with the first few sentences, and work from there.
The Analysis
[Father Samaan] heard a painful cry emerging from a ditch at the side of the road. He stopped and looked in the direction of the voice, and saw an unclothed man lying on the ground. Streams of blood oozed from deep wounds in his head and chest. He was moaning painfully for aid, saying, “Save me, help me. Have mercy on me, I am dying.”First, Satan presents us with a fantasy situation which some of us have long hoped for: the eminent death of Satan. The scenario is purely fictional: if you saw Satan dying on the side of the road, would you save him?
The emphasis here is on ‘YOU.’ What would ‘YOU’ do? Of course, by painting this picture in the mind, he is forcing the reader into a place of judgement over Satan. Despite what some Christians might think, this is not entirely incorrect. The Bible says that we, the believers in God, will judge angels, and so we see the thread of truth here.
However, Satan himself has already been judged, and not by us. It was Jesus Christ who judged Satan, defeated him, and took away his power at the Resurrection. Therefore, there is no need to judge Satan. His fate is already sealed, and no true believer would ever exalt himself above the final judgement of his Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, to either repeal or add to that ancient, noble decree. In truth, men will judge angels, but it is false to even imagine that we, ourselves, will judge Satan himself, whose judgement is finished.
It is further a lie to imagine that after his power was removed by Jesus Christ, that he has any power left today which needs to be extinguished or ‘fought against.’ He cannot resist the whisper of a child, much less the concentrated assault of a spiritual adult! Such slaughter cannot fairly be called ‘combat.’ So simply presenting us here with a choice as to whether we will ‘slay’ Satan or not is silly. He’s already dead, all we need do is remind him of it and he will flee, taking his false choices with him.
One false and one true does not equal half false, and half true. Any fallacy no matter how miniscule, added to anything else, no matter how large, equals one fallacy. Thus, for the first piece of this puzzle, we conclude that it is an attempt to deceive the reader. Thus, as we will see throughout the poem, a truth and a lie is cleverly interwoven together. We must therefore learn to carefully dissect these phrases throughout the work, judging good from evil, as we are commanded in the Bible to do.
Father Samaan came close to the man, knelt, and stared at him; but he saw a strange face with contrasting features; he saw intelligence with slyness, ugliness with beauty, and wickedness with softness.The rumored duplicity of Satan. According to folklore, Satan is some sort of mixture of ‘good and evil.’ The Bible does say that he can appear as an angel of Light — it does not say, however, that Satan possesses any of the true attributes of an angel of Light! He is a being of pure deception — whatever he is, he will try to appear to be exactly the opposite.
Gibran here implies that Satan has some kind of ‘good half,’ which contrasts and fights against his ‘bad half.’ This is an obvious lie which Satan has tried to get men to believe for centuries.
He also attempts to foist this deception upon Mankind, to cause him to believe that Man’s spirit can contain both good and evil at once. However, the Bible says unequivocally: Satan is completely evil, there is no good at all found in him, and the born-again spirit of man is completely good. There is no more evil found in him, for Jesus bore his evil on the cross, and it is dead and gone.
For Satan to be half-good and half-bad, God (in Whom all goodness dwells) would have to be in bed with Satan! But, as we will discover, making this terrible heresy seem true is the entire point of this poem.
Again, we find that this second piece of the puzzle was meant to deceive.
He withdrew to his feet sharply, and exclaimed, “Who are you?” With a fainting voice, the dying man said, “Fear me not, Father, for we have been strong friends for long.”I find this passage particularly ironic, and not entirely false as the others have been. Here is a Catholic priest from Arabia, who would never consciously dream of working closely with Satan. Yet, Satan seems to be telling the truth here, when he says, ‘We have been strong friends for long.’
The fact is, a good portion of the Church does work closely with Satan; and don’t you tell me you haven’t met these Churchians! I know you have! Everyone has met them who has ever interacted with the Church in any way.
Satan is the original coward, and a coward has only one of two reactions to the perceived threat of danger (not actual danger, but the fear of danger): he will become a bully, or he will become a sniveling man-pleaser incapable of defending himself or anyone around him. These two reactions of Satan we can see in striking bold relief within the Church, both Catholic and Protestant.
For the most part, the bad seeds of the Church opt for the first position of the coward. Among other things, the corrupt members of both the Catholic and Protestant Churches use guilt and disapproval as their primary tools to control and dominate their members, both of which are tools of the bully. If a member doesn’t attend Church, he gets guilt and disapproval instead of help. If he doesn’t do what the Church commands, he gets guilt and disapproval instead of instruction. And the primary method of conversion is either inciting unendurable guilt within the convert, or strong disapproval to the point of conversion. This guarantees that Churches will only be filled with weak and cowardly souls, who are willing to submit to this sort of abuse regularly, for a strong man walks away from a bully.
As any wise man knows, it is the weakest coward who threatens the loudest.
In reality, these congregations ruled by the bad seeds have all the marks of a dysfunctional household, where the father horribly abuses his wife and children. This especially includes the automatic response among the family members to deny that anything is wrong. The other response is to claim that their family’s self-destructive cycle is good. A beaten wife will often say that she likes the abuse, to other people’s astonishment. She will claim invariably that pain is good, and that she deserves the beating.
This appalling mindset is at the center of most Christian practice — in Catholicism, in Penance, and in Protestantism, in the belief that ‘all things work together for good,’ and that ‘God’s using this to teach me something.’ In both cases, poverty, lack, hunger, sickness, pain, and sorrow are considered ‘excellent’ things which God gives as ‘Good Gifts to Man.’
But no non-Christian would ever buy that lie. This is why so many ‘sinners’ refuse to ‘repent’ and come to Church, because even the sinners can see that the majority of Christians are horribly abused. Their own life is bad enough without adding Church to it!
The Bible says that God guides us with reigns of love, which is kind, patient, and ever-understanding of our current situation, as only the nearest and dearest friend would be. God teaches, not by harsh punishment, but by His Holy Spirit, Who is quiet and humble, soft and very wise, and Who brings healing, not pain. So obviously, only a church group which demonstrates these qualities in abundance shows any spark of God at all, yet this wonderful healing is so rare in this world, as to be called by some ‘nonexistent.’ In fact, most Christians are so fixated on this punishment mentality that they won’t listen to God unless He comes to them using harsh and disapproving tones! He certainly doesn’t want to, but what are His choices? To talk to His people with a frown, or not to ever speak to them at all? Sad, when that’s all He has to work with.
Yet there is the other extreme. A minority of the Church, both Protestant and Catholic, fear and disapprove of the bully-like domination which is traditional to Christianity, and have thrown themselves in the other direction. Their ‘god’ is so wimpy, he couldn’t save a fly from destruction. He is all about the pink clouds of Utopia and political correctness, and his congregations quickly become so D.-H.-Lawrence-boneless that their true form can no longer be made out. In fact, these congregations so-called differ so little from the heathen religions of the world, that if they didn’t hang emblems of their faith absolutely everywhere, no one would know which God they pretend to serve.
The Bible says that God is a jealous God, and will defend His people with power, and lightning, and earthquake if need be. He is Love, but even the most loving husband will kill a hooligan on the street which jumps at his wife with a knife. Only a true coward would hide from the hooligan, saving himself while allowing the wife to be killed. Their god is not the true God in any sense.
Any normal human being truly despises both of these systems, the heavy-handed bully and the weakling both, from the bottom of his heart, and will not touch them. Any normal human being can sense friendship with Satan, the destroyer, the corrupter, the weak element, and will spurn that friendship with all of his strength.
Unlike what the religiousized factions of the Church teach, Man is not trying to walk into Hell — Man is trying everything he can think of to save himself, and get out of the quicksand he’s fallen into. He knows he’s damned. Mankind is desperate, and knows very well that he’s falling uncontrollably. Man does not want to die, but is truly not aware that his worldly methods are not going to work. If he was approached rationally with methods that have proven results, rather than with the stick and club of guilt and disapproval, or the wishy-washy pleadings of the liberal man-pleaser, the Church might see more results in their conversion efforts.
Then again, how can a Church which doesn’t know how to stop itself from falling into sin and death (not eternal death, but daily death and destruction) teach anyone else how to keep from falling?
It’s the Church which wants to live in Hell, not the world. Only a truly insane masochist would plunge head-first into that pit, and call it holy.
And the Father reprimanded, “You are a lying impostor! A dying man should tell the truth. I have never seen your evil face in my entire life. Tell me who you are, or I will suffer you to die, soaked in your escaping life.” And the wounded man moved slowly and looked into the clergyman's eyes, and upon his lips appeared a mystic smile; and in a quiet, deep and smooth voice he said, “I am Satan.”How much pleasure the Deceiver must have gotten from the good Father’s knee-jerk reaction. Imagine: a coward who has no arms, and no legs, no strength, and no power, inspiring such terror in his enemies that they scream upon hearing his name.
Upon hearing the fearful word, Father Samaan uttered a terrible cry that shook the far corners of the valley...
If I made a habit of betting (which I do not, for it is thievery), I would be willing to bet almost anything that Satan inspires horror movies just so that he himself can watch them. He wants to see himself as strong (which is a lie), and see human beings, which are infinitely more powerful than him, running away from him in mindless terror. What joy he must feel, what satisfaction! It would be like a mouse watching a movie in which the mouse chases away, torments, and kills cats for pleasure.
What fantasy! What intolerably lunatic deception!
Of course, the very fact that he must get his jollies from a fantasy-medium like horror flicks and poetry, such as this one by Gibran and other more famous works such as Poe, is a stark indicator of the true poverty of his life. The poor creature cannot live his dreams out in reality. He is forced to make due with a vicarious existence lived through the art of man, whom he despises with all of his being. He is like that sad and crushed soul which sits in front of the Television all of his life, both hating and loving that machine, watching shows about the big frightening outside world, yet never getting up enough nerve to even so much as go out and get himself a job.
And again, Satan’s description of himself in this poem, and in similar works, is much like the ugly, bald, unfit man who tucks his massive beer-gut behind a cardboard cut-out of a bodybuilder, and spends five hours a day grinning at himself in a mirror.
Satan continues to vainly fantasize about himself in the following passages:
I am the enraged and mute tempest who agitates the minds of man and the hearts of women.This is halfway true. Himself and his nasty little servants, the lower demons which he deceived into losing their power as well, do run about through the earth whispering into the ears of men and women. However, it is by man’s sovereign will that he chooses to believe these whisperings, and worry about them until he is whipped to tempest. Little, pathetic Satan doesn’t have the power to whip a human being into tempest, however, man with his own power and strength is the one who whips himself up. Truthfully, demons are so deprived of power, that they can’t even force a single child to worry if it decides not to.
I am the inspiration of falsehood, slander, treachery, deceit and mockery…Entirely true. It is a spiritual fact that all thoughts have an origin. No thought originated with any human being, but has a spiritual father. Good, wholesome, noble, wonderful, pure thoughts come from God, along with all good invention and inspiration. All twisted, weak, dirty, uncomfortable, terrifying, sick, painful, and just plain stupid thoughts come from Satan and his ilk. Here, for some unknown reason, Satan is actually bragging about being the originator of every vain and empty thing on the face of the planet. This just goes to show how truly vacuous his mind really has become after six thousand years of, as the Bible puts it, burning with a fire from within which has consumed him.
…and if these elements were to be removed from this world, human society would become like a deserted field in which naught would thrive but thorns of virtue.Cute. In one way, if two words in this phrase were changed to their antonym, it would be gloriously true as stated. Indeed, if the elements of falsehood, slander, treachery, etc. were removed from the earth (in other words, all of Satan’s contributions), the world would become like a well-kept field, in which naught would grow but vines of virtue. Indeed, the world would become like Paradise, the pride and joy of it’s Owner.
But here, the deceiver falls back on one of the oldest tricks in the book, name-calling. One would think that Satan had more creativity than a five year old child, and could think of a better tactic. However, he is as petrified as a rock, the proverbial old dog who cannot learn a new trick. He got stuck at the permanent age of ‘immature,’ and will never get over it.
But such is the mind-set of a deceiver.
I am Satan everlasting.One can just hear the dripping smugness in this phrase, the oozing self-gratification. Here, the ugly bald out-of-shape coward is patting himself on the back, implying that his role in this earth shall never be removed, nor shall he ever lose his position of supposed (but not actual) domination over man.
In reality, what he’s said here is absolutely true, and implies nothing more than it stated. Satan, like all spirits including the spirits of Man, is immortal. Every creature with a sovereign will shall never cease to exist, and therefore he truly shall ‘last’ for ‘ever.’
Unfortunately for him, Satan will not be so smug about this statement of fact about one thousand years from now. He will be screaming out his desire to die, to cease to exist, as he is thrown alive into the Lake of Fire, to burn for eternity without relief. The very fact that he will be tossed alive into this Lake disproves his insinuation here that his work is needed eternal upon the earth, and his assertions put forth in the remainder of Gibran’s poem, that God cannot do His work without Satan’s invaluable ‘assistance.’ If God needed the poor creature to judge the souls of men, God wouldn’t chuck him in the trash can, would He?
I am the father and mother of sin, and if sin were to vanish, the fighters of sin would vanish with it, along with their families and structures.This one begins with absolute truth, and ends with one of the most preposterous lies in the poem. In fact, this is the first time Satan’s sneaky little plan finally rears it’s ugly head.
Intended to come across to the reader as a ‘startling revelation of truth,’ only those truly deceived to begin with would be impressed. Anyone who knows the truth of God’s Way snorts in derision at Satan’s little fantasy-world situation.
Does a conqueror vanish, once he has conquered? Hardly. Rather than vanishing, he sets himself down in the choicest location under his dominion, builds himself a massive palace, gathers to himself the most handsome young men and women to be his servants, and all the treasures of the lands he has acquired, and proceeds to spend the rest of his life enjoying himself grandly. One could even say that he becomes ‘more prominent’ post-conquest than during.
Once he has enjoyed himself to death, he leaves the kingdom to his son, and establishes a Dynasty which usually doesn’t collapse for several hundred years.
If Satan’s fantastic claims were truth, Rome, the greatest conqueror of all time, would have never existed once the first conquest was over. A nation does not cease to exist once the war is over, it begins to prosper and increase. So shall the Children of God, once the meddlesome Satan and all his little terrorist demon helpers have been chucked in the bin.
I am the heart of all evil. Would you wish for human motion to stop through cessation of my heartbeat? Would you accept the result after destroying the cause? I am the cause!This statement, made in all ferociousness by the Lord of Evil so-called, of all the things he goes on to say in this poem, is the one which triggers immediate and riotous laughter.
What a contemptuous, snot-nosed cry! What a declaration of pure ego!
Truly, Satan is the heart of all evil, because there existed no evil until ‘iniquity was found in him.’ But why be proud of ‘inventing’ evil?
Frankly, evil equals uselessness. Evil is the exact opposite of God. God is Life, Light, fruitfulness, joy, productivity, increase, and value. The exact opposite of that is emptiness, weakness, worthlessness, pathetic uselessness… a dry husk of nothing useless for any purpose, just waiting to be burnt, like the Bible says. It’s as if Satan is shouting, “I am useless! I am worthless! I am stupid, and have no intrinsic value in the universe! I have nothing, am nothing, and do nothing!”
But of course, we must remember that Satan believes his own lies. He helps create horror flicks, and then sits down to watch them. He really believes that the word ‘Evil’ is some mighty, awe-inspiring force which can crush whole cities with one hand.
As usual, he’s mixed himself up with God. It’s God who is the mighty, awe-inspiring force which can crush whole cities with one hand! Evil is merely the opposite of that. In other words, if Satan got his shoe stuck on a piece of gum, he’d be stuck to the sidewalk forever, because he’s too weak to move.
And the very thought that human motion itself would stop by the cessation of his heartbeat! Oh, my Lord, what a riot. Really, Satan? All of Mankind will stop because the most pedantic, foolish, mundane, predictable, and useless element in all of Creation is done away with? Wouldn’t humankind rather leap forward into new realms of motion which it hasn’t even dreamt of before? Wouldn’t we rather learn about spacetime and the fourth through eighth dimensions, continuing on eternal? Wouldn’t Invention and Art, Science and Exploration quadruple indefinitely, an eternal Renaissance which has no end?
Truly, when stupid people and writer’s block are eliminated from the Earth, I think we’ll be much better off.
And so, we can answer Satan unequivocally. “YES. We will gladly accept the result of destroying the cause of all uselessness and unproductively on the face of the Earth. And as you said, if you are the cause of that frustration, then you shall be destroyed, praise be to God!”
Father Samaan’s Reply
Now, the good Father is met with a dilemma. Satan, desperate and dying, has used every crafty lie in his arsenal to convince this well-meaning but woefully ignorant man that his existence is absolutely necessary. Should the Father pause for a moment to compare Satan’s words up against the victorious refrains of the Bible, he would quickly see through the deception. But, I suppose a Catholic priest in the 1800’s wasn’t very well versed in the books of the Bible, because the Father goes on to give the most repulsive reply to this lying, sneaky little worm that I have ever heard.
Unfortunately, he is merely a model for countless other Christians throughout the past millennium, who have done the same thing over, and over, and over again. Rather than doing his duty and finishing the thing off with a good kick to the head, he not only bows in respect, giving to Satan the reverence due only to God, but says:
I know now what I had not known an hour ago.Indeed! It’s too bad the wound didn’t bleed faster, Satan might have been dead within the hour it took him to deceive this Father. But, unfortunately, in this story his life essence seems reluctant to depart, for he not only survives a trip on the Father’s shoulder to a nearby hospital over bumpy roads, but all of the atrocious medical practices of the day on top of that including bleeding, and fooling around with ‘humors.’
Of course, the Father is correct: he now knows a whole load of hooey which he had never heard the likes of before. I think Satan should get some kind of award for ‘biggest pile of bologna on the planet’ or something.
Forgive my ignorance.Ouch. That a human being, created in the very Image of God, should beg a demon for forgiveness is unthinkably insulting to Man, and to God himself.
The Church has been under the mistaken impression (fostered, naturally, by Satan and his goons) that angels are somehow of a higher class than human beings, and should be worshiped… or at the very least, given a reverence nearly equal to God’s. This heresy is denounced in the strongest terms in the New Testament, for it is a boldfaced attempt to succeed where Lucifer, during his rebellion against Heaven, failed.
The fact is that reborn human beings, believers in Jesus Christ, are on equal footing with Jesus Himself. Not rank, not ability, but we are just as valuable to God. Now they might not like to hear that, but it’s a truth nonetheless which can be found liberally throughout the Bible. “Let this mind [the mind of Christ] be in you, who thought it not robbery to be called equal to God.” If Jesus didn’t think it was a sin to be called equal, then we must not either, for we are “co-heirs,” who will “rule and reign with Him.” In fact, we are “seated at His right hand,” we have taken our place on Jesus' throne. Where does Jesus sit? “At the right hand of the Father.” They sit on the same chair, and we sit with Them, on the One and Only Throne of God. Here is a news flash for the Church: ONLY GOD CAN SIT ON GOD’S THRONE.
So why has the Church been so easily misled into believing that angels, including demons, are ‘above’ Mankind, who was made in the very Image of God?
There is a very misleading verse in the Bible which is a simple act of cowardice on the part of most of the translators the past few centuries. Hebrews 2:7 is quoting Psalm 8:5 when it says in most Bibles: “What is man… for you have made him a little lower than the angels.” In actuality, even the Greek word for ‘angels’ here in the New Testament means ‘Divine Beings’, not necessarily angels, and is very vague. Any good translator, unsure of this rather vague meaning, should go back to the original Hebrew verse which this one is quoting, in order to check for original intent.
The original Hebrew of Psalm 8:5 literally translates thus: “What is Man [Adom]… for you have made him a little lower than Elohim, and put all Created things under his dominion.” Elohim, as Hebrew scholars and even some Christians are aware, is the plural name for God, representing the Trinity. Mankind, before Jesus’ rebirth, was made to be just a little lower than the Trinity, but above all created things… including angels!
Aren’t angels created things? Certainly — therefore even un-saved man, who was not created like the angels or the animals, is lord over them. Hebrews 1:14 says that angels are “ministering servants, sent to minister unto those who will inherit salvation.” Servants are below those they serve. As Hebrews 1:13 puts it, “to which angel has said God, ‘you are my son’?” Yet even Adam was called the Son of God. No angel was created personally with God’s two hands. No angel received his soul breathed from God’s own Life-Essence into his nostrils. As we know from the Bible, angels were created from fire, which God merely spoke into existence, like light and the planet. Their creation was not personal, nor was it as profound as the creation of Man.
Neither are angels, as wonderful and powerful as they are, as good and as admirable as they are, as profound a creature as Man is. The Bible says that angels wonder at Man, and watch everything we do very closely, in order to learn about God. The Bible says that we will judge the angels in the end, not the angels us… and that all angels are servants, created to serve the sons of Redemption. They are not “Masters,” as they like to call themselves, going by their other favorite title, “spirit guides.” Guides? To what? How to become just as useless and foolish as Satan?
Ironic, then, that “The Masters,” or “The Ba’al’im,” is the demons’ favorite title.
In our sad, sad story, this human Father, following in the footsteps of his grandfather Adam, is taken in by Satan’s confusing and clever net of lies, and by his most sincere apology, declares Satan his Lord without even knowing what he’s about. For who bows and scrapes to whom, the greater to the lesser, or the lesser to the greater?
I know that your existence in this world creates temptation, and temptation is a measurement by which God adjudges the value of human souls. It is a scale which Almighty God uses to weigh the spirits.He might as well have slapped God in the face and called Him a liar. The Bible says that Jesus judges the ‘value’ of human souls, or rather the righteousness of human souls, based on what He did on the cross, and whether a man has accepted that or not. That’s it, there’s nothing more which He uses as ‘measurement.’ God doesn’t hold a man’s sin against him, for that would be unrighteous of God, to first promise to ‘forgive’ man (the word means to literally forget every injury), then later to ‘remember’ it again at some Judgment.
Satan here is implying that human beings have the ability to Judge themselves, by choosing to do more good than evil, and thus ‘winning’ for themselves a place in Heaven by their own labor and tears. This is totally false. No amount of good works can save a man who has rejected Jesus' death in his place. A man gets into Heaven by claiming Jesus' death as his own, and that is the only way. There is no other way. Every other attempt to ‘clean up’ and get into Heaven based on ‘good living’ is an attempt to be one’s own god, a trick Satan is constantly trying, and failing, to achieve.
Plus, neither humans, nor their works, are qualified to judge a soul. Only Jesus has been given the authority, out of any agency in the universe, to Judge. Even the Father won’t judge, but has given all judgment to his Son to carry out.
So who is Satan? Is he greater than the Father, who Himself refuses to judge? Who is this worm, that he should attempt to snatch this position of grave honor away from our Lord and Savior? Is he the Christ? Is he the one who went to the cross to save Mankind?
While Satan’s little speech was laughable and amusing, this human beings reply to Satan’s arrogant claims is anything but. No laughing can be had at this man’s grievous answer, for it was not listening to Satan which caused him to gravely sin, but it was his own words. The Bible says, “by your words shall you be acquitted, and by your words shall you be judged.” And also the Bible teaches us that words come from the heart, and reveal a man’s true intentions. He will act upon whatever he says with his tongue, so word and deed are forever connected.
Therefore, not only has this Father damned himself, but since he is in a position of spiritual leadership, he will damn everyone he teaches these lies to as well. This is why the Bible says, “Judgment begins with the House of God,” for all of the House of God is called to be Kings and Priests, ruling over less enlightened men to their lifting up, not to their destruction. So many times in the Bible God has denounced the actions of His priests, because they so often fall into this very trap — well-meaning, they hear and then teach lies, without comparing them to the Bible to see if they are true, and by this foolishness secure their own downfall as well as the downfall of many others.
I am certain that if you die, temptation will die…Let’s deal with this half of the sentence first. As with most of Satan’s devices, the first part of any statement is usually perfectly true. However, because of the second part of this sentence, it is implied that the death of temptation is a bad thing.
How is it wrong that fathers are no longer tempted to beat their children? That violent men are no longer tempted to rape? That leaders are no longer tempted to betray their people, and become tyrants and despots? Satan implies here that it would be a travesty for temptation to fall away… but where is the benefit in all of this mayhem and destruction? Is it a good thing that good people lay awake on their beds at night sweating, unable to escape the evil thoughts which plague them day and night, and torment their righteous hearts?
If temptation were to vanish, the foolish Father surmises, people would no longer be in trouble, and would need no longer to look to God for help. But must a child look to it’s mother forever, or must it someday learn to stand on it’s own?
…and with its passing, death will destroy the ideal power which elevates and alerts man.Here is The Lie. Not a lie, not even one of the lies… this is The Lie itself.
Satan’s murdering spirit is being called an “ideal,” or perfect, power. The foolish Father claims, in pretending to be wise, that murder, rape, death, and destruction somehow elevates man, and alerts him to a higher realm of truth and awareness to God. Nothing can be farther from the truth.
The concentration camps of World War Two should be a perfect example for us. If it is true, as Satan is claiming here, that temptation elevates mankind, then the survivors of the concentration camps should have left there more elevated than any other human being. In a concentration camp, as with any Satan-controlled situation, there was so much temptation it became nearly impossible to resist the pressure which turned men on one another like rabid dogs, to do all of Satan’s signature work: “to steal, kill, and destroy.”
Yet a man who resisted this temptation was not proud of himself once he escaped that situation. Rather, he was so horrified by the sights he’d seen, the things he’d heard, that he could not talk about it for the rest of his life, and probably is still receiving counseling in Heaven to heal his mangled soul. On the other hand, every man who indulged in those evil ways died, either immediately, or soon afterward. The righteous man’s righteousness merely saved him from death… his sore temptation did not elevate him in any way.
Neither does sickness, poverty, filth, lack of all things, death, or a car wreck ‘teach’ men anything, except maybe to be even more afraid and weak than before. The prudent will become aware of the fact that he is living in a precarious situation, full of destruction and teetering on the edge of the abyss, and will come to God seeking a solution to his problem. The horrible thing is that once he has found it, he goes back and praises the evil, not God, for giving it to him. How many have credited a car-wreck with ‘bringing them closer to God,’ rather than the Holy Spirit, the actual Savior? For believe you me, if the Holy Spirit did not give the car-wreck victim the idea of coming to God for succor, he never would have come, pain or no pain. It is the Holy Spirit, not pain, which brings us closer to God.
Sin and death does not save, nor does temptation uplift Man to some higher level. Faith does that. Nobility of thought does that, and all good and noble thoughts come from God, not Satan.
No, every one of Satan’s temptations is aimed to simply destroy, pull down, and completely desecrate the God-likeness of Man, of which Satan is insanely jealous. Man is like God, and Satan wanted to be “like God.” In other words, Satan wants to be human with every ounce of his shriveled-up, mean little soul. He was cast down from Heaven for trying to be like God, and then a few days later, God came down to the earth and Personally hand-created a creature which was “like God” in every way — in God’s exact Image.
How furious he was! How spittingly green with envy! This new thing — this Man — had everything that Satan couldn’t have, was everything that Satan couldn’t be. Satan could not have a wife, yet he wanted one. We know that he wanted one, because in Noah’s day, the “sons of God” (fallen angels, part of Satan’s crowd) came to the “daughters of Men,” co-habited with them, and had sons and daughters. Where do you suppose their inspiration for this crime came from?
God condemned this species-mixing in the strongest terms, eventually triggering the Flood to erase this crime from the Earth. God’s judgement that day stands: Satan cannot be human, have anything that a human has, or be “like God,” no matter how many God-like humans he deceives into bowing down to him.
You must live, for if you die and the people know it, their fear of hell will vanish and they will cease worshiping…The abusive dysfunctionality of the Church revealed in one sweet sentence.
First of all, if Satan were to die, would Hell cease to exist? Never. It is an eternal place, where the damned will be removed from contact with the rest of the joy-filled universe forever. Only in Hell will there be sorrow, only in Hell will no need be met.
So if Hell will continue to exist, why should Men stop fearing it? Wisdom comes from God. The Bible teaches that it is the foolish who say “there is no God, no Heaven to gain, no Hell to shun.” When foolishness is cast out with Satan, then all such ridiculous sentiments will be cast out as well. Every man, filled with wisdom without exception, will shun Hell, because every man will firmly believe in it. Truth shall be all-pervasive.
Second, fear and terror does not inspire worship of God. Truly, the Bible often is translated as saying, “Fear God,” but this word translated ‘fear’ means ‘respect, reverence, awe,’ and implies joy. Therefore, consider God to be of worth and value. Give His every word weight in your mind. But do not be afraid, for terror can only lead to one of two things: fighting against whatever is terrifying, or fleeing from it. For as the apostle John said, “there is no fear in Love.” To love God, we are not terrified of Him.
Sin flees from God, because sin is filled with terror. In the Garden, after Adam fell and became sin, he fled from the sound of God walking in the garden, and hid himself from the very Being whose presence, the day before, he’d basked in and adored. This running away from God did not please God then, and does not please God now. Rather, it breaks God’s great heart.
But the Church teaches that ‘respect’ is equal to ‘terror.’ They know no other way. The iron claw of the Despot is their only concept of Kingship, and thus they call Jesus Christ a tyrant without knowing it. They expect disapproval, harsh judgments, cruel and unfeeling demands to be put upon them until they collapse from exhaustion.
Little do they realize that it is Satan, not Jesus, who acts this way. Jesus said, “My yoke is easy, my burden is light.” Tyranny is neither an easy nor a light burden to carry.
The Bible says over a hundred times, “Do not fear.” It is not a suggestion. It is a commandment. If the Bible is so set against fear, in the ‘terror’ sense, then why do we uphold it as the highest ideal?
No, it is not fear and terror which inspires worship, but the goodness of God, which is exactly what the Bible declares. Worship means “to declare worth.” How can we honestly declare the worth and value of an individual who beats us, crushes us down, destroys and maims our existence? Any such so-called ‘worship’ would be a lie, a pretending, shivering mouth-service, meant only to pacify and please the dictator… it would not be from the heart, free, innocent as children, nor would it be joyful, as the Bible commands that it be.
…for naught would be sin. You must live, for in your life is the salvation of humanity from vice and sin.This is perhaps the most twisted, the most difficult to grasp passage in the entire poem. It is simply impossible. The pathetically deceived man here reemphasizes his earlier claim that the existence of sorrow and evil is the only way possible to become aware of goodness, much as men think that the existence of darkness is the only way to define light.
This is simply not the case. Does a man who has had a perfect day, without pain or suffering or trouble, get home at night and think, “I don’t know what kind of day I’ve had, whether it was good or not, because there was no pain in it”? Never! This man would be praising God, if he believed in Him, because he’d experienced a day without distress! Does a man who eats a perfect meal, without a single rotten or disgusting part, say, “I don’t know what kind of meal I’ve eaten, because there was nothing bad in it to compare the good to”? Hardly. And even though this may stretch some people’s minds, a person born into a perfect world which has no sin would be no less aware of the goodness than a man who came from this rotten earth, and knew all about evil. Let me ask you this: was Adam unaware of Good in the Garden of Eden? If nothing else, God had told him, “it is good.” Adam knew good. This is why Satan’s original temptation of Adam was so abominable… Adam already knew Good. The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil could only teach him Evil!
No, lack of evil does not remove our ability to either know, or appreciate, good. If nothing else, when we’ve lived in a perfect world for millions of years, we still have God… and like He told Adam, He will tell us what is “good,” so that we will know. God is our teacher, not hell.
If one day of relief is good, how glorious to think of an Eternity without sorrow, as the Bible promises. An Eternity of productivity, never-ending inspiration, and complete productivity. No man will be lost, searching for his destiny, and his place in the universe — but all men will be in their place, as content in their position as Jesus Christ will be in his. No child will be unhappy, no man untaught or foolish. Everything will be provided, including challenge and adventure, and the human soul will finally be utilized to it’s fullest potential, which Satan has kept from happening for so long.
As to myself, I shall sacrifice my hatred for you on the altar of my love for man.The crowning statement of the entire disastrous mess. Wholly taken in, the priest decides — get this — to love Hatred, in order to love other men. Now you tell me: how is that going to work?? How can a man love Hatred, so that he may love others? Won’t Hatred itself infect him with it’s appalling power, entice him into it’s snare of rage, and send him out as an emissary of evil, to destroy his fellowman and eventually be destroyed in return?
But one may ask, is Satan truly Hatred incarnate? God is Love incarnate, and Satan is wholly in opposition to God… therefore, Satan by turning away has made himself opposite of God in everything that God is. God did not do this to Satan, but Satan did this to himself. So although Satan is of a pathetically lower stature (not, as some Christians have been deceived into thinking, equal to and counterbalancing God — for just as God is all power, Satan is all weakness), he is also totally opposite Love, and everything else that God is. Satan is nothing but vain fury, hissing itself into futility. But nothing, not any thing in this universe, is stronger than Love.
In this story, by attempting to follow the second commandment of Jesus, “love your neighbor as yourself,” the priest breaks the first commandment: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, and strength.” Yet we know that the second commandment can only be carried out through the first.
In fact, Satan has so deceived the poor priest, that his fate is now sealed. As the poem ends, the priest lifting Satan from the ditch and carrying him off to a hospital, the spiritual reader knows that the ‘good’ priest will be the first man that Satan will enter into, corrupt, and destroy. Why? Because this man has become a direct servant of Satan, helping and abiding him, loving Satan more than he loves himself, or God, or man.
Conclusion
So what is Satan’s role in the universe, if he truly has one? Why did God create Satan, knowing that Satan would become the destroyer of all good things?
The fact is that if Satan didn’t fall, another archangel would have. If Adam didn’t sin, another human being would have. God did not desire to make a universe full of robotic creatures, programmed to be perfect. He could not love slaves which had no will of their own, for they could not return that love in a free heart. To have no will is slavery, and God is no slavemaster. Therefore, in order to create the Universe, God had to allow each living being in it to have his own free will.
The science of statistics alone will testify that in a universe of free-willed beings, who could choose whether to sin or not to sin, it was inevitable for someone, somewhere, to choose sin. God allowed things to work out the way they did, because Satan’s fall actually created the smallest mess. He was able to clean it up with the most efficiency. One death, Jesus on the Cross, and it was finished.
Had it been some other archangel, the disaster might have been far greater. For instance, we know that Lucifer was originally a choir-leader, who led the singing of Heaven. He is merely a Maestro! Yet you can see what influence a choir-leader can have. Can you imagine what would have happened if a more intelligent, cunning, and powerful angel, the Archangel of War, for instance, had fallen instead? God forbid. I doubt humanity would have survived ten years.
Then again, what if another human besides Adam had sinned? Perhaps Cain, or one of his sons? Then, there would be two races of humanity on the earth: the sinless, immortal ones, and the corrupt, mortal sinners. The only outcome of such a situation is war, and by sheer strength, the sinless ones would have won. In order to contain the outbreak of sin, they would have killed every sinner, and not a one of them could have been saved.
From that point on, the sinless ones would rule the Earth as avengers. If any of their children from that point on ever fell into sin, even so innocent a sin as eating an apple he was forbidden to eat, the immortal avengers of the earth would have been behooved to kill him at once so that the sin didn’t spread like a plague. The chance for God’s grace to save that one from death would have been extinguished, and the clever solution of the Cross would have become very difficult indeed. In short, history would have been a much greater shambles than it has been already.
There is also the fact that God has great mercy. Although Jesus knew that Judas would betray him, he still took Judas into his home, and made him into one of his disciples. He loved Judas, and hoped to change his mind. At the very least, as God has always done, Jesus had to try to change him, in order to give him a fair chance. God is not just merciful, God is fair. Jesus gave Judas a chance to repent all the way up until the night of the Last Supper, and for all we know, probably spoke to him about it every day.
So God created Satan, in reality, to demonstrate God’s own goodness. It is not the presence of evil which makes us aware of goodness, but in the presence of evil, goodness can prove to us how far it’s willing to go. Goodness can demonstrate its limitless power, which we never would have seen in a sinless world. We might know that our human father is an honest man, and need no evidence of it to convince us. But when he is drawn into a court of law and has the choice to lie to his gain, or tell the truth to his hurt, and yet he tells the truth, then his honesty is proved and he is exalted in our sight. The court was not necessary to make us aware of his honesty; it was a vehicle by which he gained glory.
In the face of evil, God’s mercy and goodness establish our trust.
This universe is writhing under the terrible weight of the greatest war it has ever known, a war which is fast drawing to it’s close. But it is not a war as we think of war, with two great equal armies arrayed against one another. On one side is all of the Power in the universe, held in God’s hand, and on the other is a crumbling unarmed band, hiding from that Power like cockroaches, scampering into every hole to escape the Almighty’s wrath.
The only reason Satan was not thrown into the Lake of Fire when he fell from Heaven was because Adam, the King of this world, granted Satan asylum. To get to Satan, then, God had to go through human beings, and God refuses to destroy all human beings without giving each of them a fair chance. God has said that it is the salt of the earth which preserves it, and keeps it from being completely consumed and destroyed. Because righteous men exist, keeping the world alive, Satan thinks that he has escaped judgment and remains an outlaw, on the run from his rightful prison to this day.
Some day, the Righteous will be totally removed from the fight, and either caught up to Heaven or put carefully away in a safe place on Earth out of the way. Once that is accomplished, there will be nowhere for Satan to hide. The Earth will consume itself in death, and as the Bible says, would have destroyed itself completely had Jesus not returned in the nick of time to save the remnant of His righteous people and destroy evil once and for all.
Satan is very aware that this time of judgment is coming. He thinks about it constantly, and because he thinks and talks about it, the world which is under his control think and talks about it incessantly. The glut of ‘Armageddon’ scenario movies and books is enough proof of that. It is the Righteous who are looking forward to the future, excited about the coming Glory, while the unrighteous and those with World-clouded minds tremble on their beds over the Apocalypse.
Truly, if Satan didn’t hide behind Mankind, I really wonder if Gibran’s fictitious scenario might not have come to pass long ago: Satan wounded and bleeding because Michael almost stabbed him to death, finally winning that fight which has lingered on for so many Millennium — Satan dead on the side of the road, because Mankind would no longer give him shelter.
Because Satan needs Men to hide behind, to escape God’s wrath (for God will not destroy the man, allowing him to live until there is no further possible way to save that man), Satan by necessity must coerce men into helping him. All beings have free will. If all the men on Earth refused him, then I think very much that the war would be over instantly. And I have a firm suspicion that such an event will actually occur to some degree, and this mass-turning to God will signal the return of Messiah.
This lie of Satan’s necessary worth, that Satan is a God-ordained cog in the Great Machine, is only one of the various con-jobs which Satan regularly enacts in order to gain favor and succor from Men. It is a very sly one, but I think that I have sufficiently proven it false.
Satan is not necessary to Creation. He is a criminal, a convict which has escaped prison and is on the run, hiding in foolish people’s houses to escape the Law. He is a gentleman murderer, if there can be such a thing, using what he feels to be his great beauty, charm, and taste to win his victims over before he uses them to death. However, since we have true beauty, charm and taste, in the person of Jesus Christ, to compare him to, Satan’s flimsy disguise doesn’t fool the wise and sharp-sighted. He is neither beautiful, charming, nor does he posses a modicum of taste, and his days of footloose freedom are about to come to their end.
Ignore the ‘Wanted’ poster no more, but study his face. He is sorrow, he is hate… he is sickness, poverty, failure and pain. If any of these things have attempted to move into your house, to live with you, hiding from God who is Healing, expel them at once. For you have the power to expel demons: Jesus said so with his own mouth. Expel the evil ones, and live in the Light, as He is in the Light.
There is no sorrow in the Light.
