To grasp the importance of the subject of this world-renowned character known as Satan, the devil, that old serpent, it is paramount to understand some rudiment issues about it. First, the word, Satan, in the Old Testament of Bible is not a translation from a Hebrew word but a transliteration. A Transliteration from one language to another is simply to write a letter or word using the closest corresponding letters of a different alphabet or language.

For example, the Greek letters of the word Xρίστόϛ is not comprehensible to those who do not know the Greek alphabet or language; therefore, the first part of transliterating the word would be to use English letters of the alphabet, which would be written as Christos. Since Christos does not sound like an English word, the next step in transliterating it would be to make it sound English. This done by slightly changing it; such as, dropping the last two letters, making it, Christ. However, to translate the word would be to give its definition, which is, anointed.

You see, a translation conveys the actual meaning of the original word, while a transliteration is the way the alphabetical letters are written. This is so that people of the other language can recognize them; but this does nothing to convey the meaning of the word. However, although the definitions of transliterations are not given, when they are used over a period of time in the new language, they usually take on a meaning, and depending on how it is used in that language will determine its definition which may or may not have very little to do with the word from which it came.

Thus, the difference between a translation and a transliteration, and "Satan," is one of those transliterations that became an entity’s name rather than an entity’s definition due to a large part of how it first appeared in the Latin Vulgate. It was, and still is, a word without an accurate definition. It carries the thought of something completely convoluted from its true meaning, for which Catholicism had been largely responsible. Not finding fault with that religious order, just mentioning a bit of history to see from where the word came.

What the majority generally embraces concerning whom or what Satan is, does not make it so. Please know that the Kingdom of God is not a democracy, and the beliefs of the majority are not the factors of rule. The majority does not rule in the Kingdom. He rules, whether His truths conflict with them or not, and one of those truths is that God did not create a good angel that turned bad. He purposely created an adversary to exercise us. Scriptures and experience testifies that Satan is here to make things difficult for us so we can overcome every obstacle. That is a primary purpose of Satan, this agent whose purpose has been determined by God.

Satan is not a fallen angel. Satan is an entity with a dirty job. Satan does not have a rival kingdom. Satan is a servant and is not in competition with God. Satan simply has a job that he was conscripted to do, just like every other angel (messenger) whether flesh or spirit. Angels have no freewill. They do as God has called them.

"In the Genesis account of creation, we are told that God saw that each day was good, but on the last day it says that He saw that everything was VERY good. The Jewish Talmud teaches that this even refers to the evil inclination, which would include the serpent/Satan. Why is this good? It is the Evil inclination that provides our passions and desires, it is the evil inclination which is responsible for not only all the evil that transpires in this world, but also for all the good. For if we did not have passions, appetites and desires, we would also have no motivation and we would accomplish very little, either good or bad in this life.

"If you look at the use of Satan in the Hebrew bible, you find that as a concept, it is much more about an experience than a person, an experience where God has put a roadblock in front of us. This is Satan. This is an adversary. So why is this a good thing? Because if we were to go through life without ever experiencing these roadblocks or adversaries, obstacles in life, there would be no potential for virtue in the world. For if we were never tempted to do the things that we are not supposed to do, then not doing them would be of no value to us. It is only in coming up against a desire to do what is wrong and overcoming this that we grow as spiritual people.

"This evil inclination, or Satan, provides friction. Can you imagine a world with no friction, no resistance? Think about a car, how does it go? It is the friction between the tires and the road that allow the car to make progress, to go forward. Now, to the tires the friction is not necessarily a positive thing, the friction slowly destroys the tire, and yet without the friction, the tire is worthless.

"If there is no resistance to overcome, we have no environment for growth. When we come up against an obstacle, either we crash into it and fall (definitely a negative experience – the evil inclination) or we have to climb over it, and by climbing over these obstacles in life, we develop our spiritual muscles, so to speak. If we never exercise our muscles, we atrophy. So these forces in the world, these experiences, no matter how difficult or uncomfortable, are positive and important.

"To reiterate, everything was created by God, both good and evil and everything is under His control. There is only one force, not two, whereas, in Christianity Satan is not under the control of God but is rather, a competing force against Him. Christian theology makes Satan so powerful that he is erroneously given the title, ‘the god of this world.’

"Again, Satan is a servant of God who provides opportunities for us to grow, to respond to our passions and desires by producing things of value in this world and to become stronger spiritual people. (The Jewish View of Satan, Penina Taylor).

More properly, Satan should be called, the Satan, for it is not a proper name, and such is not God’s opponent. Although an opponent to people, the idea that there is anything in existence capable of setting itself up as God's opponent would be considered polytheistic; that is, we are setting up the devil as a god.

The notion of an angel having freewill is foreign to the scriptures. There is a debate over whether angels lack the potential for freewill, or whether they simply perceive reality too clearly to have any choices to make. But in any case, without the fence-straddling of the human condition, it is apparent to us that there is no freewill. Satan acts as a servant of God, not as an opponent or even a disobedient angel.

Even so, they both, He and His angel, came as opponents, as adversaries, but not as a two horned, evil eyed, tail swishing devil by the name of Satan. In the first and second chapters of Job there is a sâtân that serves as an obedient servant of the Lord by being an adversary to Job.

Who, or what, was this Satan? We believe the satan that stood up against Israel and provoked David to sin was a nation, most likely the Philistines that they were at war with during that time. David’s satan/adversary was a real, tangible threat to his kingdom, and he numbered his army, and trusted in it rather than God. It seems that he wanted to see if he stood a chance of winning the war and coming out alive. Since this satan was not named in particular, we can only speculate; but for sure, his adverse satan was not a fairytale demonic being that grew horns, bat wings, and a tail after being thrown out of heaven.

We see that it is transliterated as Satan which can cause the reader to think it is a personal being that is being referred to. The important thing to note is that in the Old Testament Hebrew Satan/sâtân never once describes a particular person. It is not used as a proper noun. It is not used as one’s name. The role of satan is that of a servant which brings about God’s purpose. It is simply an adversary, an opponent. The corresponding Greek word is diabolos which means to throw through, to traduce, to throw [bolos] something across [dia, as in diagonally] one's path. In Spanish the word is transliterated as, Diablo and Satan as Satán.

Hebrew storytellers often attribute misfortune to human sin. Some, however, also invoke adversarial satans that by God’s own order block or oppose human plans and desires. And these messengers are not necessarily evil. In the story of Balaam, God sends a donkey as a messenger, taking on the role of a satan, adversary, to prevent Balaam from disobeying God.

We find in Job 2:1 that God gathered together the sons of God, and verse two states that Satan came also among them. Satan was found in the same classification, position or rank as the sons of God in that he was in the presence of the Lord; but this does not make him equal to God or to the sons of God. Yet he was a created vessel to serve in any realm to which God called him, from the lowest of human depravity to the highest of honor.

Whether Satan is a spirit, the carnal mind, a man, or a religion, an army, or a nation— they all can serve as an adversary to someone or some thing—and each can be called a satan. For instance, Iran calls America The Great Satan. We are not sure what their mind-set might be on this; but in reality, until the past few years, this nation had been the greatest adversary Iran has ever had. Therefore, they were right on target by calling us The Great Satan.

It is obvious that Jesus is speaking to a group of people who were not literally fathered by a devilish being during some sort of satanic ritual by their mothers in a place like the Bohemian Grove where the rich and powerful go to misbehave, but they were spiritually related in the sense of their carnal-minded religious schemes and practices. Everything about them was adverse to righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit. The whole pit, they and their father were adversaries, satans, devils. Jesus was addressing the issue of enforcing upon the people their dogmatic legalism. They were as whited sepulchers in nature of having a show of righteousness in their hypocrisy; but they were like tombs that held the spiritually dead. They were satans of the lowest kind. They were from beneath, with Satan’s cycle of death in their hands, and Jesus did not mince words with such ilk.

He made it clear that Satan was their father and was a murderer from his very beginning, and at no time had he ever stood in the truth. This is contrary to traditional Christian teaching, this we know; but truth is always contrary to religious fantasies, and so many of their traditions are but fantasies.

Frankly, dear friends, I am so at odds with tradition: religious tradition (tradition of the fathers), politically right tradition, even social tradition, that I sometimes make an effort to rebel against all of it, and I am not of the 1970s hippie generation of rebellion. I thought they were stupid then, and I think many of them still are, but that’s beside the point. Even so, rebellion for the sake of rebellion is not a good thing; but when tradition makes slaves of us, it is an honorable thing and can be abolished as the truth floods our being.

Church dogma of Satan having been an angel of light and then having fallen from heaven cannot be true. Although Jesus said that He saw Satan fall as lightning from heaven, it is not in reference to having lost the war against God and having been cast out of heaven. There are two thoughts about this, and either or both are true:

Eric Ellis also wrote about this: "Satan easily orchestrates religious works of the flesh whenever people are moving in their carnal minds and not in the mind of Christ. This façade can be seen through when one has the mind of Christ. Christ will alert us when there is a form of godliness that lacks the life of the Son of God. Religion with its works denies the power of Christ, substituting another spirit in disguise. This disguise is typically the instead-of-Christ spirit. To have the mind of Christ one must also have the Spirit of Christ....; without the mind of Christ, we would tend to judge by outer appearances‚ and we would often be wrong. It is not the visible form that is so important as the spirit behind it. Satan is not and never was an angel of light, but he can disguise himself to look good to the carnal mind. That is his territory. His dominion is the realm of darkness, (for he feeds on the dust of the flesh-nature). This counterfeit is instead-of-Christ. It is the spirit force behind the knowledge of good and evil when one is apart from Christ, the Tree of Life.

"No. To see what really happened we will look at that verse in context.

"Another way to say this key phrase is, ‘I saw the power of Satan cast out of the people that you 70 ministered to. I saw this happen quickly, as fast as lightning is cast out of heaven.’ Satan was not in an anointed position in heaven. He was never a light-bearer. There is no scripture to support such a fantasy. The demonic powers of Satan were ruling in the people to which the 70 ministered the delivering power of Christ. The 70 had the power of Christ because they were found in Christ and it was the Spirit of Christ operating through them. Jesus was saying that without being present in His body, He was there in Spirit. It was His Holy Spirit that did the work of deliverance. Jesus knew that the demons would have to obey those 70 who were found in His nature...His Spirit.

The other thought is closer, more personal. It is that of our dear friend, J. Preston Eby:

We find Jesus being tempted by Satan in Matthew 4:1-11. Here the word devil is used which is the Greek diabolos. It is the same word used by Jesus in John 6:70 when He said that Judas was the devil. Later, it says that at the last supper Satan entered him (ref. Matthew 26:25, Luke 22:3), indicating that they are one and the same.

We will take note again that it says this adversary masquerades as an angel of light in 2 Corinthians 11:14. "And no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light."

It goes without saying that a plethora of religious people appear to be holy, pure, and righteous; but in truth, it is the exact opposite—satans, they are. They are adverse to the truth and what is good for the people. Moreover, whether inwardly or outwardly, each and every masquerader can easily be conquered by Christ. Any satan is less than Christ in power, for this accuser is a created vessel. And don’t we know that one’s creation is always less than its creator.

Surely, we know that in and through Christ all things have been created, so therefore, it is all placed under our feet. We are victorious because the serpent’s meat is the dust of the earth, the adamic nature. With us being seated in heavenly places in Christ Jesus, we are far removed from his feeding troughs, and from this pinon place, rather than being cast down, devoured, and trodden asunder by this adversary, we do the casting down.

The word old in the Greek is archaios and is from where we get the transliterated word, archaic. The Greek means, original, that which was from its very beginning. If we were to go to the root word we would find that it comes from archomai which means to commence in order of time.

With this in mind, let us share another thought from Preston Eby:

To move forward in time, we see that the serpent was a symbol of religious Babylon. The book of Genesis was written many years after creation, some say by Moses. If this is so, then it was written around 1500 BC. The symbolism selected would be current ideas of that era, and Babylon was a great power then and would reemerge as a power centuries later as well. During that period, the serpent was the symbol of false religion.

Again we find the same three temptations in Revelation 21:8 which present three areas of failure. First in importance are idolaters, sorcerers, and liars. This represents spiritual corruption. Secondly is murders and the sexually immoral which represents sins of the flesh. Thirdly are things related to the carnal mind—unbelief, cowardly. Thus all three areas of corruption are seen—mentally, fleshly and spiritually.

Hopefully, we have shown that satan is a spirit of corruption but not one spirit in particular; that satan is not necessarily a person; that satan is a created being for a purpose in God's great plan; that Satan did not fall but was evil from the beginning; that satan is an angel, a messenger, a spirit, the carnal mind, a man, an army, a nation, and more.

Now, isn’t this good news?

To be continued...