Engaging the Evil One

The following excerpt is taken from What Every Christian Should Know About Satan. Order your copy in print, Kindle, or Audible versions here.

Throughout this study, we have explored various names and titles for the archenemy of mankind. Satan stands defiantly against God and God’s creatures. He appears as a beautiful and seductive “burning one” in Genesis 3. Then, across the pages of Scripture, we see his story unfold in nightmarish fashion as he slanders God, engages in hand-to-hand combat in the heavenly realms, and seeks to ruin the very beings God created as his imagers – namely, you and me. 

Often, the evil one is successful. But he wages war in a shrinking theater. First thrown out of heaven, then cast to earth, then confined to the abyss, he finally is banished to the lake of fire, a place God specifically prepares for him and his spirit saboteurs.

At every diabolical turn, the evil one finds himself set back on his heels. First, in the wake of Adam and Eve’s fall, Yahweh promises his human creatures a redeemer – the seed of woman – who is to crush the evil one’s head, although at great personal cost (Gen. 3:15). Next, God bars humans from the tree of life so they won’t be bound eternally in a fallen state (Gen. 3:22-24). 

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Glory in Restoration

This is another in a series of excerpts from What Every Christian Should Know About the Return of Jesus, released by High Street Press and available at Amazon. 

The glorified body of Jesus easily navigates a world still under the curse of sin. After his emergence from the tomb, Jesus eats, travels, speaks with befuddled eyewitnesses of his resurrection, passes through closed doors, transports himself instantly from one location to another, and finally launches from the Mount of Olives into heaven. 

Our resurrected bodies will have many of these same capabilities. Yet the redemptive work of God isn’t finished at our resurrection. The world in which we now live was not always cursed, nor will it always be cursed. A day is coming when our sovereign Lord makes all things new (Rev. 21:5).

We’ll explore the new heavens and earth in future columns. For now, let’s survey three New Testament passages that address the restoration of our bodies.

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Does God Plan to Save Satan?

The following excerpt is taken from What Every Christian Should Know About Satan. Order your copy in print, Kindle, or Audible versions here.

Scripture is clear that Satan’s eternal destiny is the unrelenting lake of fire. It is the place into which the antichrist, the false prophet, and all unbelievers are cast as well. It does not appear there is any reversal of fortune for those in hell. Nevertheless, some in the early church took a different view. 

Clement of Alexandria, for example, thought there was hope for the devil based on God’s limitless mercy. Clement’s pupil, Origen, took it a step further. He argued for apocatastasis, or the idea that all things made by God return to him. He once wrote, “We believe that the goodness of God through Christ will restore his entire creation to one end, even his enemies being conquered and subdued.”

 In Origen’s view, everyone – including Satan, evil spirits, and the most wicked humans – ultimately submit to God’s sovereignty and are saved. Thus, Satan ceases to be evil and has his angelic nature restored. 

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The Goodness of Hell

The following excerpt is taken from What Every Christian Should Know About Satan. Order your copy in print, Kindle, or Audible versions here.

Hell is an awful prospect for anyone. C. S. Lewis once shuddered at the concept of hell: “There is no doctrine which I would more willingly remove from Christianity than this, if it lay in my power.”

But let’s consider for a moment that the notion of a loving God and the doctrine of hell are perfectly compatible. There is nothing of one that cancels out the other. Jesus speaks frequently on hell and alludes to it in parables. He tells some religious leaders they are headed for hell. He warns his listeners against this place where the worm does not die and the fires are not quenched. He refers to hell as “outer darkness.” And he says hell was prepared for Satan and evil spirits, yet he makes it clear that many people are going to spend eternity there.

So, in what possible way is hell good?

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Two Questions about Hell

The following excerpt is taken from What Every Christian Should Know About Satan. Order your copy in print, Kindle, or Audible versions here.

When we consider the final destiny of Satan, demons, and the unrepentant wicked, at least two questions often arise. In this post, we briefly address both of them: Is hellfire literal? And, Is hell forever?

Is hellfire literal? 

We might ask: When Jesus and the New Testament writers depict hell, are we to take the lake of fire literally or figuratively? Godly scholars stand on both sides of the debate. Charles Spurgeon, for example, spoke of hell’s fire as real:

Now, do not begin telling me that that is metaphorical fire: who cares for that? If a man were to threaten to give me a metaphorical blow on the head, I should care very little about it; he would be welcome to give me as many as he pleased. And what say the wicked? “We do not care about metaphorical fires.” But they are real, sir – yes, as real as yourself. There is a real fire in hell, as truly as you have now a real body – a fire exactly like that which we have on earth in everything except this – that it will not consume, though it will torture you. You have seen the asbestos lying in the fire red hot, but when you take it out it is unconsumed. So your body will be prepared by God in such a way that it will burn forever without being consumed; it will lie, not as you consider, in metaphorical fire, but in actual flame.

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