How To Pick Up A Fallen Angel

Today we can see that the word for satan in the Hebrew is sawtawn and it does not speak of a personal name for a cosmic fallen angel. Today we begin to unwrap the errors about a supposed fallen angel who is said to be Lucifer. We might then see that this word lucifer was simply a title for a king who fell from power. The word Lucifer isn’t even used anywhere in any translation today except in one place in the KJV Bible. Isaiah 14:12 is unquestionably not about Satan, rather it is about the King of Babylon who miss-stepped one too many times and was about to have his kingdom ripped from him. This King, who was thought to be the bright morning star and hailed as the God Venus, is only a man; and Isaiah calls him that repeatedly in the famous Lucifer passage. Is Satan a man? Well if not then Isaiah was dealing with something other than the fall of an angel when he said;” Oh son of the dawn, how you have fallen from your lofty position (the English says heaven but the metaphor cannot be ignored).

Had it not been for the Pharisees who glazed the true biblical monotheism with a veiled dualism, then the Satan of Christianity might never have made it into apocalyptic literature, through the intertestamental period, and into Christianity. Thanks to these puffed up, power hungry, creators of man-made doctrine; you and I are dealt a God who can’t control the universe. We are given a God who allows another cosmic being to harm His children; a God that seemingly is a patsy and doesn’t move to stop this nefarious sower of malice. Even if the Messiah died and rose again, supposedly doing so to destroy the works of the devil, this beast of burden and blight marches on to enslave untold millions. How can this be? Well it can’t; we have been taught incorrectly.

Had it not been for the Pharisees who gained power and control during the period of Hellenization after they left Persia, we might be left without this man-made doctrine of Satan. We would clearly see that God is the adversary or that man is the adversary…after all, the Hebrew word for Satan just means adversary; as do the Greek word for Satan and the Greek word diabolos. We would understand that to have a devil means to have a false doctrine, or sometimes to be afflicted with a disease. We could find the truth in Messiah Yeshua calling Peter Satan when Peter was being an adversary to God’s plan for Christ to die. Get behind me Satan either means Peter is Satan or Jesus knew that a satanas was simply a human opposed to another man or to God.

Let me make this real simple for us all.

 There is no fallen angel and for you and I to shake the wrong idea about Satan out of our minds we simple need to pick up this fallen angel and look at in the right light. The Light that a first century Hebrew would have looked at it in.

Satan isn’t real…any scholar worth his salt can find out what the word means. And any scholar who professes to know the Bible should be able to connect the dots on where the Christian doctrine started. He or she should be able to pin down where the exiled Jews started to feel like there was another being that could do evil to them.

If Satan is hurled down in a vision, then we are being told of false religion being stopped at some point.

If Satan comes as an angel of light then either he is another God or the writer was familiar with the term as meaning those who teach what they say is truth do indeed appear to have truth,,. They appear to be messengers of light as are their associate messengers. Those who work to spread what they believe is truth but is not the truth of God’s word.

If you or I are daimonizomai(demon possessed) we are fighting with either  a physical disease or more likely struggling against a mental illness…otherwise the idea that Satan can inhabit my soul is to say he is like God. If Satan can enter my spirit then that makes the God who says there is none like Him to be crazy Himself, because there then is one like Him.

If Satan tempts me or tests a person of God, we are being shown nothing more than a man is being an adversary to another man. By trying to sway him from the path a person’s inclination to justify wrong or chooses a path that is not the desire of God is working inside the person. This internal conflict is the satan. Yes satan is after all of us, but the satan is our own evil desires that are always in our members.

The serpent is not a snake inhabited by Satan nor is it an incarnation or shape-shift of Satan. Those who had spent generations in Egypt  always understood the serpent to be a reference to a subtle influence. A stealthy internal justification that works craftily in man to persuade one to make certain choices. It may be that you or I could talk one another or even ourselves into eating something we know isn’t good for us. The serpent is that mental justification that moves us to just do it…thinking God doesn’t care.

The dragon is the ancient Politico-religious structure that opposes the people of God. Pharaoh the king of Egypt was called the dragon and so was a Babylonian article of worship. Sure the dragon will be cast into oblivion as is represented by the Lake of Fire. All this simply means  the self-exalting politico-religious system is brought to a halt by the Creator…that then is when the dragon will be cast down…false religion will be obliterated.

Who and what is Satan?

That question is so easy to answer, it is so rudimentary to the faith in the God of Israel, it is so simple and commonplace for the person who thinks like one of the fellas that wrote the bible.

  • Satan is in the mirror…satan is me…satan is you.
  • Satan is false teachings
  • Satan is disease
  • Satan is false religious systems
  • Satan is religious leadersSatan is everything that opposes God and
  • Satan is everything that opposes man.
  • Even God can be satan but Satan is not a literal entity who swears to get you into his hellish kingdom.

So the next time someone tries to load a mythological cosmic being called Satan, with the credit or blame for something bad…let’s help them consider a better answer. That answer is to realize how everything that is charged against a supernatural cosmic Satan has its origin right here on this physical earth. Nothing from outside can defile a man, including a non-existent Satan, it is from within, from our blood pumping, oxygen sending, muscle of life. It is from the heart that evil comes. Once we see the facts that Satan was a construct of human cultures that were trying to understand evil in the world and we take all the blame and responsibility that we should for evil; then we can begin behaving as humans do and see our true weaknesses. Weaknesses that reveal none of us have made it close to the Glory of God. Because our heart is continually evil form the beginning and the heart is deceitfully wicked above all else…who can figure it out?

As for Satan being real…well go ahead and believe it…but then you might miss out on finding out some fascinating stuff about yourself and about the One God. I guess if Satan is your truth then you have to decide...is this truth yours or is it someone elses that you accepted due to the lack of a better suggestion?

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James R. Brayshaw