The accuser. The adversary. The fallen angel. Lucifer. Satan. The devil has many names, and appears throughout the Bible.
Discussing these passages with our young people may be something we either shy away from, or put too much emphasis on. In the second part of his series on Revelation, Steve Griffiths explores the references to Satan in Revelation and explains how to get the balance right when tackling this difficult theological area with your group.
Getting the balance right
It was in The Screwtape Letters that C.S. Lewis wrote: ‘There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them. They themselves are equally pleased by both errors and hail a materialist or a magician with the same delight.’
This is a very apt warning to us all. We need to keep a balanced perspective with regard to the role of Satan in God’s creation. We must not make too much of his influence, nor must we pay too little regard to the reality of spiritual warfare. It is particularly important for those of us involved in youth ministry to reflect on our approach. It is tempting to sensationalise the Christian message by excessive talk of spiritual warfare and a battle raging between good and evil. It may well titillate the ears of young hearers and even inspire them to sign up as warriors for the cause of Christ – but we need to be sure that what we are teaching is truly biblical. If we do not, we are both betraying our adherence to the word of God and may also cause untold spiritual damage to the young people in our care.
The book of Revelation has lots to say about spiritual warfare. However, it is not the central theme of John’s letter – far from it – and we must be sure not to present this part of scripture to young people in such a way that dishonours the author’s original intent.
We must get the balance right. John knew that and urged his readers to reflect deeply on this issue.
The danger of underestimating Satan
In Revelation 2:13, God spoke through John to the Christians in Pergamum saying, ‘I know where you live – where Satan has his throne.’ ‘I know where you live’ is an interesting phrase because the word for ‘live’ here is not just about a place they inhabit, it is also stressing the fact that they are settled there: in the original Greek it is an active verb, which suggests the Christians are settled down and quite happy to go about their everyday business in the place where Satan lives. It is as if Jesus wants to stress their passivity in the face of the influence of Satan in their midst.
Pergamum was a multicultural, multifaith environment. There were temples to Isis, Dionysius and Zeus on the mountains surrounding the city. The Christians of Pergamum would have looked up to the hills around them and seen only idols and shrines and temples to other gods and political ideologies. Pergamum was not the throne of God. Pergamum was the throne of Satan. Yet many of the believers were content to carry on their everyday lives without any concern about the spiritual state of their city. In 2:16, God’s message to them is very clear: ‘Repent, then’.
I wonder to what extent we are developing in our young people the ability to recognise Satan’s influence in their community? I am not thinking about some simplistic, theologically naïve approach that adheres to the ‘if-it’s-not-Christian-it-must-be-ofthe-devil’ school of thought. I am thinking about a more sophisticated approach to faith, where we educate our young people to see the influence of Satan in the evils of homelessness, marginalisation of the poor and elderly, human trafficking, a benefits-system that penalises the wrong people and so on. If we do not help our young people to understand oppression as a spiritual evil, we will never help them mature as Christians. Underestimating Satan leads to spiritual dwarfism because our young people do not learn to see evil for what it truly is – an offense against God.
The danger of overestimating Satan
Yet it is just as dangerous to nurture young people in a spirituality that sees the devil everywhere. The end result is that young people never take responsibility for their own spiritual failures. To excuse inappropriate behaviour by saying, ‘Satan tempted me…’ is no different from Adam and Eve’s pathetic attempt to exonerate themselves in the Garden of Eden.
In Revelation, John does not underplay the reality of spiritual warfare. Nor does he overplay it. He urges the believers in the seven churches to take responsibility for their own decisions and behaviour before God. To be sure, the influence of Satan in the world is strong, but John tends to locate that in structural and societal sin (through corrupt political structures, through economic systems and through perverted religious activities) and not so much in the lives of individual people. To remain true to John’s teaching, we must help young people focus on structural and societal satanic activity whilst encouraging them to take responsibility for their personal spiritual lives.
The reality is that Satan is not that powerful. We must dispel the myth that there is a battle raging between God and Satan. There isn’t – and that is for two reasons.
First, Satan was defeated on the cross of Christ. If we teach young people that the battle continues, we disparage Christ’s atoning work. His final words before he died were, ‘It is finished!’ (John 19:30). The battle is over. Salvation has been won.
Second, whilst we recognise that the aftershocks of what was a ‘Satanic spiritual earthquake’ continue to a limited extent beyond Christ’s victory, this is not to say that what continues is a battle of two equals or even near-equals. This is what John says in Rev 20:1-2: ‘Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven, holding in his hand the key to the bottomless pit and a great chain. He seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the Devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years.’ John is stressing the fact that Satan is not all that powerful: it doesn’t take almighty God to bind him; an angel is perfectly capable of the task. So let’s not develop any theology that overplays the power of Satan and speaks about him as if he were a worthy adversary of God. He’s not. Even an angel can defeat him!
Who is Satan?
Despite what many preachers say from the pulpit, it is wrong to assume that there is one ‘biblical idea’ about who Satan is. The Bible uses the term in a number of different ways – and so does John in Revelation.
The names Devil and Satan mean roughly the same thing – ‘Adversary’. Devil is a Greek word and Satan is a Hebrew word.
The Old Testament doesn’t use the word Satan as we use the word Satan: it was a word used for human adversaries, not just spiritual ones. For example, in 1 Kings 11:14 and 23, God raises up an adversary (a satan) against Solomon. David is described as an adversary (‘a satan’) in 1 Samuel 29 by the Philistines. Even when angels are spoken of as adversaries in the Old Testament, it isn’t necessarily a derogatory idea. For example, in Numbers 22:22, we read: ‘God was angry because Balaam was going, and as he came riding on his donkey, accompanied by his two servants, the angel of the Lord took his stand in the road to bar his way.’ The word used here concerning the angel of the Lord is ‘adversary’: satan.
However, as time went by, the word became attached to the spirit that we know as Satan today. In Rev 20:2, John ascribes three names to Satan: ‘The dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the Devil.’ Each one of these names denotes a specific type of activity. As dragon, he is the enemy of God (12:7). As serpent, he is the deceiver of human beings (12:9). As Devil, he is the slanderer of human beings before God (2:9). The good news is that when the angel casts him into the bottomless pit at the End Times, all these functions will be removed from the face of creation. And after being cast into that bottomless pit, we read in 20:3, ‘[the angel] locked it and sealed it’. This is another emphatic declaration about the inability of Satan to harm people. The reason he is cast into the pit is given to us in the same verse: ‘So that he would deceive the nations no more’. This indicates to us that God is in absolute control and he is even in control of the End Times. It is not for Satan to choose the time or moment of his displays of power; God controls even that – because he is the king of kings and lord of lords.
The focus of Satan’s energy
Satan is the enemy of God but knows that he is not powerful enough to defeat God. So, like a hunting leopard, he chooses instead to attack the herd, the church, and pick off the weakest to devour. John is clear that the focus of Satan’s energy is destroying the Church. John’s idea is clearly outlined in Chapter 12. In 12:1, the people of God are portrayed as a woman in labour, giving birth to the Messiah who, as the Christmas Carol ‘Once in Royal David’s City’ reminds us, is ‘born in us today’. In verse three, the dragon appears, representing ultimate earthly power (ten horns) throughout all corrupt political regimes (seven heads). In verse five, the woman (Church) gives birth to the child who will, ‘rule all the nations with a rod of iron’ (a reference to Psalm 2:7-9) and the child is then ‘snatched away and taken to God and to his throne’. This is a reference to the ministry of Christ, from birth to ascension, being the root of our salvation. In verses 13-14, the dragon is so angry that he pursues the woman and she seeks respite in the wilderness. Jewish history is peppered with stories about Israel seeking sanctuary in the wilderness and, while there, enjoying intimacy with God. So what John is saying is that, in these last days, from the ascension to the second coming of Jesus, we are in a wilderness experience with God - enjoying his protection and an intimate relationship with him.
Our current experience of Satan is recorded in verse 17: ‘Then the dragon was angry with the woman, and went off to make war on the rest of her children, those who keep the commandments of God and hold the testimony of Jesus.’ Our experience is that Satan is at war with all Christians. He has been frustrated by the angels, defeated by the redeemer and lost his place in heaven. So he vents his rage on us. That is the way of the world until the second coming and his final vanquishing.
Living with the reality
As we await the second coming, we stand with young people in their experience of satanic oppression. In doing that, we hold on to a significant truth about Satan from Chapter 12. He has been cast down out of heaven (v8) and there is a very important implication from that. Satan no longer acts as accuser: he cannot accuse us before God because he is no longer in God’s presence. The more we reflect on that fact, the more incredible it becomes to us. You and I no longer stand accused before God because of our sin: there is no-one in heaven to accuse us. We are free from guilt because Christ has made us righteous and there is no one in heaven to tell God any different. Our salvation is absolutely secure.
Yes, Satan attacks. Yes, Satan vents his anger at us. But Christians are secure in the protection of God. The redeemer has defeated Satan. He can no longer accuse us. The children of God have nothing to fear. The battle is not over but the war has been won - and that is the greatest truth we can share with our young people.
Steve Griffiths is rector of Linton team ministry, and a regular contributor to Youthwork.
