JoshebB
Active member
.
We were discussing Satan's identity, his constitution, his ontology, not his teleology or other tangential aspects of his existence. I reiterate this because I'm going to make a comment about Revelation that is preterist. Then I'll proceed with a few comments about Satan. Revelation is an apocalyptic book of prophecy BUT Revelation explicitly states much of its contents had already occurred prior to the revelation of Revelation. Rev. 1:1-3, for example, explicitly states what was revealed was going to happen quickly because the time was near, or at hand (Gk.: engys). Rev. 1:19 explicitly states John was to write down 1) things that he'd seen, 2) things that are, and 3) things that take place after these things (things that take place after what he'd seen and what are/was. Therefore, roughly two-thirds of the book had either already happened or was happening at the time John wrote the book of Revelation. Only a third, roughly speaking, was in his future. None of it is explicitly stated to be in our future. Futurists, especially modern futurists of the Dispensational Premillennial (DP) and Zionist Premillennial variety reject what those two verses say. They reject the literal reading out of hand and incent wildly interpretive alternatives that violate the basic rules of exegesis and their own hermeneutic (DPism claims to read scripture literally).
So, for example, when Revelation speaks of a woman bearing a male child and that child being persecuted and we know, from reading the gospels, that Mary bore a male child that was persecuted..... we know that portion of Revelation falls into the first two categories of Revelation 1:19. Mary had her child prior to John penning Revelation, and he'd seen the persecution of that child himself. Similarly, when scripture states Satan is the serpent of old we know, rom reading Genesis, that the serpent of old is a reference that goes all the way back to Eden. Scripture has just framed or "bookended" itself. That portion of Revelation, again, falls into the first and possibly the second category of Rev. 1:19. Satan being the serpent of old is an event that already existed when John penned Revelation, and John may (or may not) have seen Satan thrown down.... if the throwing down occurred, as you have said, when Jesus sent his disciples out to evangelize.
Now, as far as Satan goes, the first thing we know is that Satan is a created creature. He is not self-existing. There is only one self-existing Being in the Bible and that Guy is God, the Creator of all that has been made. The Genesis account of creation begins with the statement "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth," but then most of what proceeds pertains to the creation of the earth, not the heavens. There's not verse stating when or how the heavenly host were created. We have to piece that together from later texts Like the psalms and the prophets). What we know is that creation was created in six days and everything God created was very good (Gen. 1:31). That means Satan was not originally malevolent. He, like the original two humans, Adam and Eve, started out as a good and sinless created creature.
Does that much make sense to you?
I'm going to jump ahead to something Mr. Gore said in that video because he interpreted the Deuteronomy 32 and Daniel 12 texts to mean there are lesser gods, the elohim, that were princes, lesser gods that ruled or had some kind of power and/or authority over various parts of the earth and God divided up the nations and set their boundaries according to the gods that oversaw that terrain. That is certainly one way of interpreting what the text of scripture states. That would be an interpretation consistent with Hebraic cosmology and the Hebrew zodiac/astrology. It would be an interpretation consistent with Michael Heiser's work.
The problem is God eschews astrology and the zodiac and there are no gods but God.
A better view, one that holds consistency with the whole of scripture is that the nations were divided up based on the gods men worshipped. That would have nothing to do with actual elohim or any structure of lesser rules God established over the earth. We might ask why it is the omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient God wants or needs lesser gods with lesser rules. From very early on in the scriptural record of history scripture entertains the premise of other gods. That's a simple fact of scripture. However, Paul wrote something very remarkable in his first letter to the saints in Corinth. He explicitly stated, "...an idol is nothing at all in the world, and that there is no God but one." An idol is nothing and there is not other God, there are no other gods (think of Elijah's mockery of Baal).
This is why, in my reply to this op, I called for discernment when reading/listening to Heiser so as not to fall prey to the problem of Judaization. We are Christians, not Jews. Our theology is different than that of Judaism. Our cosmology is different. Our hamartiology, our ecclesiology, or eschatology and more is all different. Tankah is always correct. Judaism is often wrong.
We see this also in the Jesus' teaching about the afterlife. Jesus probably taught in Aramaic. With the possible exception of Matthew, the New Testament was written in Greek. Word like, "hell," "hades," and "tartarus," are Greek words, not Aramaic words. "Sheol" is Hebrew and "gehenna" is Aramaic. Those are the words Jesus most likely used and if he used other terms then they were most likely Hebrew or Aramaic words. If Jesus used words from other cultures, then he did so without affirming their pagan religions. In other words, if and when Jesus ever used the word "hades," he was NOT implicitly teaching an actual lesser god existed. Jesus did not teach any paganism. He taught the truth. There is no lesser god named Hades, and there is no lesser god named Hel, any more than the gods Osiris, Baal, or Molech actually exist. In classic, traditional orthodox Judaism there was only Sheol, the grave and in the grave the dead knew nothing. The grave was the end and there was no life after death. There was no resurrection. Although the Old Testament does mention and allude to both, that was not what mainstream Judaism taught. The belief in a resurrection and life on the other side of the grave arose during the intertestamental period and the rise of the sects of the Pharisees and Essenes. Jesus came on the seen and told the Jews that their theology of the grave was wrong. So too was the theology of ALL the surrounding cultures. There is no underworld ruled by a lesser god where dead folks go to live in misery.... but otherwise still conscious, sentient and free to walk about in the realm of Hades, Hel, or Osiris. Instead, Jesus taught a very plain and simple dichotomy: you either believe in him and sow to the Spirit and reap eternal life, or you do not believe in him and sow to the flesh and reap decay, rot, and destruction.
So, they hung him on a cross and murdered him.
There are no lesser gods.
Satan is NOT a lesser god. He never ruled any underworld of the dead. Satan himself is dead in sin.
Satan is not a lesser god, but he is a created creature who was once good and sinless but somehow at some point in his life became not good and sinful. Satan is a minion, a servile underling of his Creator. The word "satan," means "adversary." Because Satan was originally a good and sinless created creature (according to Genesis 1:31), he was also not always the adversary. We know this because, logically speaking, being an adversary of God is not a good thing, God does not call evil good or good evil..... and God Himself declared everything He'd made "very good."
Because I've read your use of scripture and your use of extrabiblical sources (like Gore) I'm assuming you know the relevant scriptures. I've cited or mentioned only the most germane ones but if you want to know where scripture says "X," or how any inferences are made then ask.
Does the above make sense?
Scripture states what scripture states and when context, symbology, language, etc. are germane then scripture usually provides its own information.
We were discussing Satan's identity, his constitution, his ontology, not his teleology or other tangential aspects of his existence. I reiterate this because I'm going to make a comment about Revelation that is preterist. Then I'll proceed with a few comments about Satan. Revelation is an apocalyptic book of prophecy BUT Revelation explicitly states much of its contents had already occurred prior to the revelation of Revelation. Rev. 1:1-3, for example, explicitly states what was revealed was going to happen quickly because the time was near, or at hand (Gk.: engys). Rev. 1:19 explicitly states John was to write down 1) things that he'd seen, 2) things that are, and 3) things that take place after these things (things that take place after what he'd seen and what are/was. Therefore, roughly two-thirds of the book had either already happened or was happening at the time John wrote the book of Revelation. Only a third, roughly speaking, was in his future. None of it is explicitly stated to be in our future. Futurists, especially modern futurists of the Dispensational Premillennial (DP) and Zionist Premillennial variety reject what those two verses say. They reject the literal reading out of hand and incent wildly interpretive alternatives that violate the basic rules of exegesis and their own hermeneutic (DPism claims to read scripture literally).
So, for example, when Revelation speaks of a woman bearing a male child and that child being persecuted and we know, from reading the gospels, that Mary bore a male child that was persecuted..... we know that portion of Revelation falls into the first two categories of Revelation 1:19. Mary had her child prior to John penning Revelation, and he'd seen the persecution of that child himself. Similarly, when scripture states Satan is the serpent of old we know, rom reading Genesis, that the serpent of old is a reference that goes all the way back to Eden. Scripture has just framed or "bookended" itself. That portion of Revelation, again, falls into the first and possibly the second category of Rev. 1:19. Satan being the serpent of old is an event that already existed when John penned Revelation, and John may (or may not) have seen Satan thrown down.... if the throwing down occurred, as you have said, when Jesus sent his disciples out to evangelize.
Now, as far as Satan goes, the first thing we know is that Satan is a created creature. He is not self-existing. There is only one self-existing Being in the Bible and that Guy is God, the Creator of all that has been made. The Genesis account of creation begins with the statement "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth," but then most of what proceeds pertains to the creation of the earth, not the heavens. There's not verse stating when or how the heavenly host were created. We have to piece that together from later texts Like the psalms and the prophets). What we know is that creation was created in six days and everything God created was very good (Gen. 1:31). That means Satan was not originally malevolent. He, like the original two humans, Adam and Eve, started out as a good and sinless created creature.
Does that much make sense to you?
I'm going to jump ahead to something Mr. Gore said in that video because he interpreted the Deuteronomy 32 and Daniel 12 texts to mean there are lesser gods, the elohim, that were princes, lesser gods that ruled or had some kind of power and/or authority over various parts of the earth and God divided up the nations and set their boundaries according to the gods that oversaw that terrain. That is certainly one way of interpreting what the text of scripture states. That would be an interpretation consistent with Hebraic cosmology and the Hebrew zodiac/astrology. It would be an interpretation consistent with Michael Heiser's work.
The problem is God eschews astrology and the zodiac and there are no gods but God.
A better view, one that holds consistency with the whole of scripture is that the nations were divided up based on the gods men worshipped. That would have nothing to do with actual elohim or any structure of lesser rules God established over the earth. We might ask why it is the omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient God wants or needs lesser gods with lesser rules. From very early on in the scriptural record of history scripture entertains the premise of other gods. That's a simple fact of scripture. However, Paul wrote something very remarkable in his first letter to the saints in Corinth. He explicitly stated, "...an idol is nothing at all in the world, and that there is no God but one." An idol is nothing and there is not other God, there are no other gods (think of Elijah's mockery of Baal).
This is why, in my reply to this op, I called for discernment when reading/listening to Heiser so as not to fall prey to the problem of Judaization. We are Christians, not Jews. Our theology is different than that of Judaism. Our cosmology is different. Our hamartiology, our ecclesiology, or eschatology and more is all different. Tankah is always correct. Judaism is often wrong.
We see this also in the Jesus' teaching about the afterlife. Jesus probably taught in Aramaic. With the possible exception of Matthew, the New Testament was written in Greek. Word like, "hell," "hades," and "tartarus," are Greek words, not Aramaic words. "Sheol" is Hebrew and "gehenna" is Aramaic. Those are the words Jesus most likely used and if he used other terms then they were most likely Hebrew or Aramaic words. If Jesus used words from other cultures, then he did so without affirming their pagan religions. In other words, if and when Jesus ever used the word "hades," he was NOT implicitly teaching an actual lesser god existed. Jesus did not teach any paganism. He taught the truth. There is no lesser god named Hades, and there is no lesser god named Hel, any more than the gods Osiris, Baal, or Molech actually exist. In classic, traditional orthodox Judaism there was only Sheol, the grave and in the grave the dead knew nothing. The grave was the end and there was no life after death. There was no resurrection. Although the Old Testament does mention and allude to both, that was not what mainstream Judaism taught. The belief in a resurrection and life on the other side of the grave arose during the intertestamental period and the rise of the sects of the Pharisees and Essenes. Jesus came on the seen and told the Jews that their theology of the grave was wrong. So too was the theology of ALL the surrounding cultures. There is no underworld ruled by a lesser god where dead folks go to live in misery.... but otherwise still conscious, sentient and free to walk about in the realm of Hades, Hel, or Osiris. Instead, Jesus taught a very plain and simple dichotomy: you either believe in him and sow to the Spirit and reap eternal life, or you do not believe in him and sow to the flesh and reap decay, rot, and destruction.
So, they hung him on a cross and murdered him.
There are no lesser gods.
Satan is NOT a lesser god. He never ruled any underworld of the dead. Satan himself is dead in sin.
Satan is not a lesser god, but he is a created creature who was once good and sinless but somehow at some point in his life became not good and sinful. Satan is a minion, a servile underling of his Creator. The word "satan," means "adversary." Because Satan was originally a good and sinless created creature (according to Genesis 1:31), he was also not always the adversary. We know this because, logically speaking, being an adversary of God is not a good thing, God does not call evil good or good evil..... and God Himself declared everything He'd made "very good."
Because I've read your use of scripture and your use of extrabiblical sources (like Gore) I'm assuming you know the relevant scriptures. I've cited or mentioned only the most germane ones but if you want to know where scripture says "X," or how any inferences are made then ask.
Does the above make sense?
). That is why I did not couch the paragraph above in the tradition of Satan as a fallen angel. Whether former angel or not, he is a created creature and he is sinful. Those two conditions dictate a lot about him when the whole of scripture is considered. 
