Satanology 101
– What Your Pastor Should Know, But Can’t Tell You !
Satanology 101
– What Your Pastor Should Know, But Can’t Tell You !
Introduction
XOFC expresses its concern about the rise of the growing references and use of Satan/Lucifer as a Role Model and as a positive Moral Force, a trend which we believe is rapidly increasing. XOFC expresses its regret towards the Christian Church, which has not only failed to take a strong stand in this area & topic, but is hardly aware of any debate or discussion on this subject (which is taking place) , This despite the enormous success & growth of occult publishing within the past 7 to 10 years.
XOFC calls on Pastors, Youth Pastors, and Christian Leaders to acquaint themselves with what is actually going on – in the country (& World) at large, and to continue to act as the Salt of the Earth and a true and strong model of what the Church and a well-grounded Spiritually Strong Christian should be.
Further, XOFC takes note of the fact that most Pastors have absolutely No Clue about how the debate on Satan and Lucifer (as 2 distinct beings) is affecting the New Bible Versions and the translation/rendering of standard proof-texts on the identity of Satan, Lucifer and Jesus Christ.
From “Satan the Evil One” to “Lucifer the Light-Bearer”
Bible Version & The Changing/Morphing Definitions of Lucifer and Satan
We assert in this article - that the issue of what the English rendering of Satan & Lucifer is: in 1) the New Testament and 2) in the Old Testament, as well as 3) in the Footnotes of any Bible and 4) References - needs to be first understood from a historical point of view - in terms of Divorcing the English Meaning of the words which discuss/refer to Satan/Lucifer from the Hebrew words.
The Assumption by Pastors and Bible Students is that the English Rendering of Satan in the Bible is dependent first on the Hebrew and then on the Greek. This view is mistaken. There is less and less correlation between the English Rendering of Satan/Lucifer and the Hebrew or the Greek...because the Personal Point-of-view of the Translators and Translation Committees has overshadowed the meaning of the terms.
Pastors have insufficient understanding of the effects of “deconstructionist grammar” and keep thinking that the debate is about one thing when really it is about something else entirely...The concepts, terminology and implications of this debate on so many levels is not even perceived by 95% of most pastors/youth pastors.
Once we understand the facts about the actual debates in society about the identities of Lucifer/Satan, then we have a base from which we are able to accurately address the specifics of the terms and definitions.
----------------
Hard as it is to understand to those unfamiliar with the politics of Terminology and the Behind-the-scenes Politics of Bible Translations, The English rendering of words is less and less dependent on what the Greek or Hebrew actually states and more and more on what the Translators THINK the Greek or Hebrew Text should say.
That is why the Revised English Bible (1989-UK) has gone so far as to de-genderize terms that in the Hebrew and the Greek retain Gender Particularity and Distinction. That is why Bibles are now showing up which talk about God-the-Mother (instead of God the Father) or God the Father/Mother.
Part of the problem in discussing Satan the being, is that it is hard for evangelicals to think of Satan without thinking of Satanists, and this conjures up images of human sacrifice, etc, and many other things which - certainly evangelicals - would find rather hideous.
But Satan has much more sophistication than mere sacrifice (and the point theologically about Human Sacrifice, is that it remains the Anti-Sacrifice of Jesus, where a human literally sheds blood in an attempt to satisfy his god).
Evangelicals know little about Satan-ists, but even less about Occultists. The notion that people can be entirely personally committed to Satan, while perceiving Satan as a true Angel of Light, is something that most evangelicals have trouble believing CAN happen. But the point is that there are far more Occultists and Luciferians than there are Satanists.
There are overlap between the groups as the more “initiated” of them will confess - off the record. And of Occultists within Academia and Seminaries, there is no end. Now contrary to the expectations of standard evangelicals, these Occultists do not hide, or at least not much. They write books, they speak, they lecture, they go to debates...but most of this takes place obviously outside of evangelical circles. Yet they interact with the rest of their academic or seminary colleagues, so why can’t we all just get along ? (Just read the bestseller The Aquarian Conspiracy by Ferguson...then come back and see if you agree or not)
Yet despite the mention of some of these factors influencing the debate about Lucifer-Satan, It will be very difficult for standard evangelicals to understand what is really going on with Satan Lucifer terminologies, because they mis-understand the debate. More importantly, they misunderstand the Contextualization of the debate.
How could this be ? After all, the debate about Lucifer & Satan uses the Bible as a text to adjudicate and decide in what context Satan and Lucifer should be presented to the Public. Evangelicals of course, still say that they will let their Bibles decide (though that little point is being rapidly addressed by Bible publishers).
[Did you notice the small shift in that last paragraph ? It was “uses the Bible as a text to adjudicate” instead of “uses the Bible as THE text to adjudicate”]
As we often hear in seminary, theology is too important to be left to the theologians. And nowhere is this more true than in the area of Satan & Lucifer. Most of the premises that we are about to share usually are taken as offensive by pastors. And the reason is that in many cases, pastors have almost no clue about the discussion in society about a subject (Satan/Lucifer) which had historically belonged within the ecclesiastical realm of Pastors but has long since left them high and dry.
Society at large has stopped consulting Pastors on most issues long ago (and since most pastors shunned “social impact”, why should that surprise anyone ?). However, just because Pastors are deemed irrelevant by society does not mean that society has not moved on and addressed the issues (in anycase) that used to be the exclusive purview of Pastors.
Most pastors of course, claim Not to be moral cowards, but they will continually refuse to address or answer the kinds of questions that are asked sometimes at places such as this site. And that is why many people have to have bulletin-board discussions about the KJV/NIV/Versions, not only because most Pastors are highly ignorant in an area where they are supposed to be informed, but because they realize their ignorance, and are determined to avoid the discussion of anything which could result in the termination of their paycheck, (i.e. job termination) not on grounds of ignorance, but on grounds of moral cowardice.
(And how many of you here have NOT had highly detailed hours-long discussions with your pastors about the various versions - precisely because the pastor knows he is out of his depth, he knows he is out of his “competence” ???
...much of his audience knows it also though, which is why so many evangelicals are switching to the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox faith -)
The Pastors should be encouraged to become competent in these areas, but wait...stop and imagine the actual work that pastors would have to do, and actual study...and actual learning, and real reading, somehow the Roman Catholic Bishops seem to find the time to learn the ancient languages and ancient texts...if only to misquote them...
Modern Society takes a very keen interest in who Satan is and Should be, and he (Satan) is the topic of dissertations in colleges, Conferences, Lecture series, etc - all accomplished without the slightest assistance from Pastors, Evangelicals, the Church or anything else Christian in any sense.
Religion at the College Level (in other words - those who are framing the debate about God for the next 50 to 75 years) usually takes place with manuals on Voodoo, anthropological studies of Shamanism, and discussion of the “persecution of witches” presented by modern Witches, who are brought onto campus to lecture [somehow, the millions of christians martyred for their faith is never quite brought up].
But Education is too important to be left to the educators. So who cares about College ? Just go to your local Barnes & Noble or to Borders, Books & Music, and to the metaphysical or occult section, and you will see the rows after rows of books not only about the occult, but about Satan, Mephistopheles, Beelzebub, the Evil Presence, the Devil, Abraxas, the Evil One, etc.
So we don’t really have any obligation to talk to our pastors (if we don’t care what the Bible says about holding our Christian Brothers accountable) and demonstrate to them, that they are largely irrelevant to society, to the youth, or to any society-wide debate {and that they could change this, if they really wanted to}. We can simply notice their irrelevance by noticing the absence of their point of view - on the shelves of modern bookstores.
Even if they perceive themselves to be relevant, their point of view will only reach a few, and the Kids (teens) already have a very strong grasp on both the occult and Satan (though not from the Christian Perspective) thanks to the local bookstores who sell “All of that innocuous stuff”.
The Reason why Satan is so important is because he is the cleavage point, the point of departure for either faith: Either the true Christian Faith or the True New Age Faith: Lucifer is the link to both. The problem is that the same person who is defined as a bad guy (Satan) for one group (the true Christian Church), is the same person who is defined as a good guy (Lucifer - the “real” light bearer) for the other group (those in the new age/occult)...and the New Age/Occult presently controls 90% of almost all social institutions and 95% of all political institutions. But that is just on the level of societal influence. Converting average members of society still remains the central task and goal. Remember the goal of Lucifer: not to accept conversion, but toWILL yourself to him [do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law - Aleister Crowley]
The Issue of Versions will be crucial to the issue of who Satan or Lucifer turns out to be, though not for the obvious reasons.
Having covered the issue of who knows very little about the subject of the Sociology of Satan/Lucifer (Pastors/the church), we will now turn for a moment to those who do. But actually the issue of who Satan turns out to be (whether Lucifer or not, whether an evil being or merely a misunderstood one) has much less to do with Who knows these answers, than it has to do with “WHEN”.
The answers about Lucifer & Satan must accurately be understood in the context of WHEN the origins of the debate took place (yes, besides the Fall of Man and the Tower of Babel).
Most people (evangelicals especially) think that this debate about the identity of Lucifer/Satan started in the 1960s. Why ? They point to the starting of the Aquarian Popular Movements in the 1960s, and to the proliferation of Satanism & Witchcraft which gained wide exposure in the 1960s.
Well those things are true. But what is missed is that the re-flowering of the occult in the 1960s really is only the explanation of what happens when the Occult meets the Medium of the Mass Media.
By now you may have guessed that the reason why the topic of the debate about Lucifer-Satan is so important is because there is a great, wide and vast attempt presently to re-cast Lucifer as the true being of light, and to separate this true being-of-light from Satan [who would be merely the invention of the “church”].
So while the Church weakly claims to understand who Satan is, most pastors are having a harder and harder time explaining who he is to the younger generation who have already had Satan and Lucifer defined to them. He is present in Black Sabath, Led Zep, Pink Floyd etc. (Music as a tool for trances or theological subversion is old news). But what is much more interesting, down-to-earth and locally available - is the amazing proliferation of books on the Occult and Demonism, Wicca, Satanic Rituals, and possession (Yes, how to covet and cultivate demonic possession ...your own), are the Texts and Textbooks which specifically mention Satan as the lead or key topic of the Book.
If you want the specifics maybe you should ask for anonymously for your youth group to educate you about the better points of Satanism and all of the fun you might be missing...You probably think that Sabrina the Teenage witch or Buffy the Vampire Slayer are the title of gothic novels for simpletons ? (or you could just go to your local bookstore and ask them to show you the right section)...
Back to the Issue of Lucifer-Satan and who gets to define Him (He/She/It).
The issues of occultism and the identity of Lucifer/Satan are important, and the terms are important. But the Most important factors are Audience, Market Share, Leverage and Contextualization. The issue is not really about the Terms of the debate, but in the wider frame of “who gets to decide” what the terms of the debate should be.
And in order to understand this, we have to really go back to the mid 1800s. Now this is not a shock to the occultists, but it IS a shock (often) to the Evangelicals. After all, We are talking about Satan,...and Is there now an implication that people in the 1800s were messing with the definitions of Satan and Lucifer, and that today this is having an impact on us, our debate, bible versions, the debates on religion in Colleges, etc ???
Part II
The answer is Yes, those are some of the implications. Let’s very briefly look at how those occult manuals and textbooks were released in the 1960s, and see if this has anything to do with the debate on who gets to convince society at large of who Satan is...
We all know that the Catholic Church confiscated many manuals of strong occultism, demonic rituals, records of seances, etc over the years of its existence. These books were the basis for its own justification of the Inquisition (well, occultism and the Protestant’s use of the Bible, and copying accurate Bible Versions without official church sanction, etc...).
Well, Napoleon was busy conquering Europe and he stopped off at the Vatican. More precisely, he overan it. All of the manuscripts which had been seized by the Vatican containing occult material and how to conjure demons, all of these manuscripts were about to see the light of day.
The Catholic Church had one of the best occult & demonic libraries of the world. The Vatican Library was carted off to France. There it was placed under the custody of two men. These two men would later become famous in the occult underground. And why shouldn’t they ? After all, they now had access to the best demonic sources in the world, the library which the Inquisition had seized.
These were the 2 men: The first was a French man well known in literature circles, named Charles Nodier. He had many students that he schooled in the Occult and Demonism, one of which was a young poet and author named Victor Hugo.
The Second man in charge of the Vatican Library was an ex-catholic Priest. Legally, his name was Alphonse Louis Constant. But to the rest of the world, he is better known today as the Satanist Eliphas Levi.
He also had many disciples (among which are Bulwer Lytton). Napoleon’s Career came to its final defeat around 1815. But the custodians of the Vatican library carried on their work. French Freemasons sent the work of Eliphas Levi straight from Paris over to the head of American Freemasonry, Albert Pike. He simply plagiarized the work of Eliphas Levi and then stuck that in
his own “Morals and Dogma”. But the Occult influence of Eliphas Levi was most felt in England, where occultist from all over the British Empire had found a safe haven. (Notice that it was occultists who found the safe haven in England, “Witchcraft” remained a crime in England until the 1950s).
Most of the people who are today educating the younger generation into occultism are in fact simply the books from the 1800s. The manuals of H.P. Blavatsky were written and released in the 1870s (her teachings were around long before then). Bulwer-Lutton released his occult books in England through the 1800s (and several of those are manuals for occultism). Eliphas Levi published his first works on the Devil & Satanism in the 1840s, though his formal Rituals of High Magick came out in 1860. There are other works of course, but neither time nor space permits. And these are still only the official ones...there were many manuals that still appear today, but are actually from the era of the mid 1850s.
Interesting that Cambridge and Oxford were not removed from this debate on the Occult in the 1850s. In fact they were very much a part of it. Interesting that Westcott and Hort both Graduated from Cambridge in the 1850s. They State (so, not their oponents, but THEY state) - that they began working on their version of the New Testament in 1852 !!!
That was long before the official date of begining of the Revised Version Translation Committees in the 1870s. In view of the facts about WHEN Westcott & Hort began their textual “translation/creation”, it becomes important to remember that the Translations Committees of the Revised Version only translated into English from the Greek Texts that Westcott provided to them. The Translation committees did not collate nor decide which ancient manuscripts should be part of the version they were translating. Only Westcott & Hort could decide that.
The Translation Committees did vote on the texts whether to accept or reject them, but they consistently voted to accept the Texts of Westcott & Hort. That is a surprise to no-one, and also one of the Reasons that FHA Scrivener complained that he was voted down consistently at the expense of truth. Several of the members of the Translation Cttee were also part of the Secret Societies of Cambridge. But the important point is that the occultic materials from France had filtered their way to Cambridge right at the time when Westcott & Hort were there. And it is a matter of public record that among there were circles of occultists at Cambridge, not only around Ruskin & Tennyson, but that there was an entire group of occult professors known as the NeoPlatonists, and two of their students at the time were Westcott & Hort.
Look up this definition in the works of H.P. Blavatsky (The Secret Doctrine) and what is a Neo-Platonist ? Someone who acknowledges the supremacy of Lucifer as the light bearer of the Universe. (I actually recommend that you stay away from Blavatsky until you have read “The Adversary” by Martin Bubek, “Overcoming the Adversary” (also by Bubek), and Hidden Dangers of the Rainbow [which directly concerns Blavatsky] ).
By the way, we forgot to mention that the original magazine put out by the New Agers starting in 1875 was simply called “Lucifer”.
Aleister Crowley [Satanist yes, but also a graduate of Cambridge] claimed to be the reincarnation of Eliphas Levi, and Alice Bailey claimed to continue the work of H.P. Blavatsky. But frankly, what is causing us to focus on the relevance of so called occultic or demonic authors is their claim that they are preparing the way for THEIR messiah.
Crowley called it the age of the Coming Eon in his inspiration by his spirit guide Aiwass. Alice Bailey wrote many books about the occult messiah, (one of which is called “the Re-appearance of the Christ”), and you can get these books in almost any bookstore and certainly in any city town with a population larger than 20,000.
So the Occultists have their messiah...Well the Buddhists have their messiah, the 13th reincarnation of the Buddha who will appear - only this buddha is called Matreya...and the Moslems are awaiting the return of one of their Prophets, According to Judaism, they await their “True messiah” and of course the Christians claim that their Messiah is going to return also.
Therefore all of the major world religions/major worldview are ALL awaiting the return of their long sought for messiah. This is not what I am alleging. It is what they are stating. Now we turn our attention back to the issue of Lucifer.
“Now if Lucifer and the Christ are the same, and if Christ and Jesus are the same, then probably Lucifer and Jesus may be the same”. In the Bible context, things may seem clear, but only at first. In the first part of this, we wrote:
“After all, the debate about Lucifer & Satan uses the Bible as a text to adjudicate and decide in what context Satan and Lucifer should be presented to the Public.”
Yes, OK even the public uses the Bible. But which Bible ? No, we do NOT mean which Version ! We mean: Which Bible ? Is it the Bible of the 66 Books ? Or is it the Bible of the Apocryphal Books ?
Is it the Lost Books of the Bible ? Is it the Lost Books of Eden ? Is it the Aquarian Gospel of Jesus the Christ ? Is it a Course in Miracles ? Is it the Poisonwood Bible ? Or the Celestine Prophecy ? Is it the Islamic teachings of Jesus the Prophet ? Or is it the Teachings of Jesus according to Elizabeth Claire Prophet ? Or is it the Jesus of Father Matthew Fox ? Or the Jesus of the Jesus Seminar (Funk, et al) ? Or the Jesus of the Q Gospel (Bloom) ? Or the Jesus of the Dead Sea Scrolls ? Or the Nag Hammadi Library ? Or the Gnostic Gospels ?
Those of you who believe in the 66 books (a dwindling proportion every day we may add) are part of a small group. The rest of the world bypassed this issue long ago, and has moved on to accept many other books as part of the Bible. The issue of not only of “Who Jesus is” but of “Where to find Him” is mired in the sea of books, and textbooks, and “discoveries” all claiming to be something new, different, good, better, secret, hidden or revealed ...about Jesus.
What all of these texts have in common however, is that almost all of the new Texts point to a rising Messiah who claims to be the one called Jesus, and this new Jesus has teachings which contradict the historical teachings of the historic Christian Church and the true and historic Jesus Christ.
So, when it comes to Modern Versions, the question of HOW the Passages about Satan are defined are in fact central to the issue not only of who Satan is supposed to be, but also of who Jesus Christ is supposed to be.
There is a growing number of people who are using standard texts about the Coming Messiah in the Book of Revelation in the New Testament, and then going back to the Old Testament sections on Satan, in order to argue and assert that the Coming Messiah and the Old Testament Lucifer are one and the same.
Many of the people who are advancing this argument actually believe that when they are discussing their coming messiah as being also Lucifer, that they still also think that this is Jesus Christ. How can this be ? They are asserting a metaphorical interpretation [or allegorical interp] of the Old Testament passages.
Now in view of this kind of theology, advanced on this kind of level, if you cannot argue the facts about who Satan and Jesus are from the Greek Text of the New Testament, then from where will you assert your defense ? Usually the Hebrew is more complicated, not less !
But the first point here would be to stop and assess the impact of the New Modern Versions in the Bluring of the Line between Christ, Satan, God, Jesus and Lucifer. The Second point is to realize that almost all modern versions are - by their own definitions these days - Transitional.
The NIV was presented as a finalized version. But if you look at the words of the TNIV Cttee, they state that where the TNIV is today, that is the place where they (the NIV/TNIV Cttee) wanted to take their readership...from the beginning of their project... [and the TNIV is due for a revision in 2005]. Of course, aging boomers continue to stand by their NIV, but their children and the rest of the evangelical crowd has already moved on to the TNIV.
But both the TNIV and the NIV are really a drop in the bucket compared to all of the other kinds of Bibles out there, which are NOT comprised of the 66 books of the Old Testament.
Many people’s view of Satan will be influenced by their view of Hell. If Hell were a bad place, then Satan would be a bad guy. But if Hades were a cool place to hang out with all your budies, then Satan may only be a “hardcore party animal”. Therefore maybe the views of Hell of some of the translators of the Modern Versions may be relevant. Many of them do have anti-traditional views of Hell and Eternity (that might mean that they are not saved, though some might be, are we really going to start judging ?....oh - yeah...the spiritual man judgeth all things...)
Of Course, Wesctott & Hort did not Believe in Hell. Westcott did not believe in the Fall of Man nor original sin, so by definition he did not believe that Satan had tempted mankind into a fall. John Stott, so-called Evangelical used to believe in Hell, but now no longer believes in this, and simply calls his doctrine the doctrine of annihilation (which sounds really bad, but actually simply means that when you die, you either Go to Heaven or you Cease to Exist, but you do not Go to Hell). Eastern Religions simply call this “Soul Sleep”.
But of course, the views of John Stott did not disqualify him from sitting on the Board of Directors of the UBS, the United Bible Societies that produces the Red Cover Greek Nestle-Aland Text [or forgery depending on your point of view]. A member of the translation Committee of the Nestle Aland Text believes that only by membership through Baptism and the Eucharist (Miracle or Blasphemy) can one go to heaven, and he does not believe that Christians end up in Hell only Purgatory [This is Roman Catholic Archbishop Carlo Martini, who also believes that Evangelicals are mentally insane]. Another Member (Alan Wikgren) of the Translation Committee of the UBS Nestle Aland Text may be able to trump all of the other members, because he has spent much of his time in the Apocryphal book of Enoch. This is the Book which tells the Story of how Demonic Beings possessed and molested human women.
Prophecy studies are conducted by the Catholic Church, in the groups that follow the Lady of Fatima and the Blue Army. Fatima happens also to be one of the daughters of Mohamed, and there are branches of Islam that heavily lean towards prophecy, and the Mulahs are studying this. The Buddhists know their prophecy but only care about ensuring their next personal incarnation (Western converts believe in Evolution, Eastern Buddhists believe in Devolution). OF course, Judaism is looking to the Prophetic, the Charismatic Movement is just plain making prophecies up through their “New Apostolic Reformation” (Led by Peter Wagner, Ted Haggard, the Kansas City Prophets and other assorted Heretics), the Black Moslems in the US believe in the Reincarnation of Farakhan, and the New Agers and occultists in addition to their Coming Christ also believe in Prophecies (Prophecies of Seth/Nostradamus/Ramtha/etc) in great abundance. Therefore, the whole world watches, learns and waits.
But the issue of deciding about which texts are at the heart of the Book of Isaiah and Ezekiel and the reconciliation of those texts to the Books of the New Testament are crucial to understanding how to respond to the debates that have and are crystalizing around:
1. Who Jesus Is
2. Who he is not
3. Is he the coming one ?
4. Is he also Lucifer
5. Is Lucifer Bad or Evil
6. Is Lucifer Satan ?
7. If the forces which oppose this “coming Christ” are therefore Anti-Christ, then what should be done with them ?
http://www.exorthodoxforchrist.com/satanology_101.htm