At the Second Church of Odyssey you'll find different ways of expressing your beliefs, finding prayer support or being encouraged through regular devotionals.
I get a little tired of Christians attributing their problems directly to Satan and acting like he is basically the EVIL parallel version of God. Satan is on a much lower power class level and I would venture that he doesn't personally know many individual people even exist. I mean, he isn't omniscient or omnipresent. I'm not sure why Christians want to attribute him more power than he actually possesses.
I too wouldn't attribute every problem of mine directly to Satan but might you be going a bit far to the other extreme in saying he doesn't know we exist?
I think C.S. Lewis book The Screwtape letters is an excellent source for this topic.
Does he really know the name of every single person in the world and have a clue what they are doing most of the time, though? He can only do one thing at a time, I assume he focuses on world leaders or influential people of some kind.
Because to the best of my understanding only God is omnipresent. Yeah, he has other fallen angels... I just get tired of the Facebook comments like "I had such a bad day yesterday, but today will be great! TAKE THAT SATAN!" that inspired this topic.
I just imagine Satan getting word of things like that and LOLing that he is getting credit for stuff he doesn't even know about.
Yeah those kind of Facebook comments are annoying.
I would absolutely agree that only God is omnipresent, I would just wonder if angels fallen or otherwise experience time the same as we do, I say this because I believe in intercession of the Saints, those that are no longer present with us and for them to intercede for all of us they have to experience time differently than the rest of us but maybe I'm over analyzing.
Now, what do you think about The Screwtape Letters though?
The Top Crusader wrote:Because to the best of my understanding only God is omnipresent. Yeah, he has other fallen angels... I just get tired of the Facebook comments like "I had such a bad day yesterday, but today will be great! TAKE THAT SATAN!" that inspired this topic.
I just imagine Satan getting word of things like that and LOLing that he is getting credit for stuff he doesn't even know about.
Heh, so funny.
I'm not necessarily sure if he knows every single one of us exists, but he does have his minions going through the earth. I would think they would do the grunt work and tell him "ooh. we need to go anger Top." And taking into account of in Luke 2, there was a host of heavenly angels, or an "army", meaning, a lot of angels. That, if that were all of the angels, was only 2/3 of the entire angel population (so to speak). I doubt that would've been all of the 2/3. But continuing. So if the angels in Luke 2 were only part of the 2/3, I would guess there would be lots of demons of the 1/3. Why I went into that, I'm not sure. Edit: Now I remember. I was proving my point on how Satan may know we exist. There are lots of demons.
1x admin, 2x moderator. 3-26-11, 5-25-12
Jehoshaphat wrote:I mean every election is basically just choosing what type of government we want.
The Top Crusader wrote:As far as the Screwtape Letters, I like CS Lewis and all but a random novella he wrote isn't biblical theology.
I don't typically like to create RAGING BATTLES with you, Top, but you really should read the book before saying so. The storyline it gives of an experienced demon helping an unskilled one does give us an idea of the demon world, and reading it would help you understand the things Ayn, Whitty Whit and TKD have said. Personally, I think it's probable that there's tens of millions of demons.
The Top Crusader wrote:Because to the best of my understanding only God is omnipresent. Yeah, he has other fallen angels... I just get tired of the Facebook comments like "I had such a bad day yesterday, but today will be great! TAKE THAT SATAN!" that inspired this topic.
I just imagine Satan getting word of things like that and LOLing that he is getting credit for stuff he doesn't even know about.
This, however, I agree with. We're driven to sin both by the temptation of Satan and by our own pathetic self. Undoubtedly, these people should be concerned with fighting their flesh with the Spirit, and not with making provocative comments to Satan.
he/him | attorney | spartan | christian | bleeding heart type
Note: My past posts do not necessarily reflect my values. Many of them were made when I was young and (in retrospect) misguided. If you identify a post that expresses misinformation, prejudice, or anything harmful, please let me know.
he/him | attorney | spartan | christian | bleeding heart type
Note: My past posts do not necessarily reflect my values. Many of them were made when I was young and (in retrospect) misguided. If you identify a post that expresses misinformation, prejudice, or anything harmful, please let me know.
Actually, you guys are all looking at it wrong. I don't believe Satan is a literal being with 'powers' or 'limited knowledge'. He's part of the spirit realm, which means he's beyond our capacity of comprehension. The way I tend to see the spirit world is actually similar to the way the 'Force' is portrayed in Star Wars; in the spiritual realm, there's forces of both good and evil, not invisible monsters with a 'big boss' who orders them around (the difference, of course, is that we don't 'control' the force ). God, of course, is very personal, but He doesn't have an 'arch-nemesis' in the form of a fallen angel. It's very unhelpful to imagine the spirit realm as it is portrayed in Frank Peretti's Darkness novels.
Fallacy of false continuum. // bookworm Any cupcake can be made holy through being baptized in the name of the Butter, the Vanilla and the Powdered Sugar. // Kait
Well I think we should get our view of the spiritual realm from Scripture not Star Wars and according to Job Satan is a literal figure and according to several examples in the Gospels there are literal demonic forces that are active in our lives. I think it's unhelpful to imagine spiritual warfare as some nebulous concept that doesn't affect our lives in very direct and real ways.
Top: Well of course it isn't biblical theology but I think it's a insightful look into spiritual warfare.
American Eagle wrote:The storyline it gives of an experienced demon helping an unskilled one does give us an idea of the demon world, and reading it would help you understand the things Ayn, Whitty Whit and TKD have said. Personally, I think it's probable that there's tens of millions of demons.
Heh, I haven't read the Screwtape letters.
LOL about the Star wars thing.
Another view is that Satan doesn't know we as a person exist, but he just lays massive traps and just waits for someone to walk into it. It's not like "oh. today, I want to go hurt AE." It's more of a "Ha. I've created this whole web of lies, and I hope someone is foolish enough to walk into it." That may be possible.
1x admin, 2x moderator. 3-26-11, 5-25-12
Jehoshaphat wrote:I mean every election is basically just choosing what type of government we want.
Okay I honestly haven't read any of this thread. I just saw the title and thought I would say what I have heard.
Basically Satan is like us, he can only be in one place at one time "working on" one person. He does however have many demons that work for him, and there are many of them.
He may know we exist, he may not. I don't think it's very necessary for us to know, although it is interesting to think about.
My two cents.
Last edited by Joanne on Mon Jan 23, 2012 4:23 pm, edited 2 times in total.
~*~StrongNChrist, November 22, 1991- March, 25th, 2011~*~
Interesting that you guys brought this up, we just talked about this in church a few weeks ago, and briefly again today in my Bible study.
I don't think Satan is literally keeping tabs on everyone, but he does 'work on' people, just not all at the same time. I also think he has many demons causing trouble. A friend of mine mentioned this verse, and I thought it was fitting, it's James 4:7.
—
I don't think its a huge issue that we need to spend lots of time analyzing and stuff, but yes, Satan is real.
Feel free to disagree with me, y'all are pretty good at disagreeing
I agree this doesn't need to be over analyzed, I think several of us have expressed an acceptable range of beliefs regarding this topic. The only person I would very much disagree with would be Jelly.
Ayn Rand wrote:Well I think we should get our view of the spiritual realm from Scripture not Star Wars
I never suggested we should, and that's hardly my point. But the concept of "getting a view of the spiritual realm from Scripture" is such an insanely broad idea that it could mean almost anything. This is where many, many hours of theological thought come into play. The Scriptures themselves give us snapshots; various prophetic words and instances of historical narrative that give us hints at the workings of the spiritual realm. Never do the Biblical authors attempt to explain the technical analysis of angels and demons or describe the character of Satan because they were merely mortals with only a mortal capacity of comprehension and no way of 'seeing the invisible'. God reveals himself in tastes, sure, and we barely know what to make with that. It's usually a subjective experience, and as such cannot stand for the doctrinal technicalities we try to make it to be.
Ayn Rand wrote:according to Job Satan is a literal figure and according to several examples in the Gospels there are literal demonic forces that are active in our lives.
Context, context, context. The Book of Job is a poetic parable in form and application, hardly to be taken literally. Are we to expect that somehow the author went up to heaven and witnessed casual spiritual discussion with his own eyes? Hardly. The first several chapters of Job set up the scene for the theological problem of sin to be addressed in the form of a narrative. Nobody was there with a tape recorder to capture the audible discussion between God and Job, because it never happened like that. I won't insist that the character of Job was entirely fictional, but surely the premise of the overall narrative hardly intends historical accuracy for itself. Jesus, of course, also spoke in parables. Instances of demonic possession could also be taken in ways of representation, if you so desired. That's not really my point, though. My point is that we can't take the few examples we see in the Gospels and invent an entirely technical construct of the spiritual realm that we somehow have the ability to understand and have say into. There's far, far more than we'll ever have the ability to comprehend as long as we're on earth, and any tastes we have to build off of are almost solely instances of subjective experience.
Joanne wrote:Okay I honestly haven't read any of this thread. I just saw the title and thought I would say what I have heard.
Small side note: This always irks me. >_> Whether intentional or not, it appears as though you're suggesting that you don't care what anyone else has to say and you only care about getting your word in. At the very least, it portrays incompetence in regards to engaging in fair debate.
Fallacy of false continuum. // bookworm Any cupcake can be made holy through being baptized in the name of the Butter, the Vanilla and the Powdered Sugar. // Kait
Does Satan know we exist?
The storyline it gives of an experienced demon helping an unskilled one does give us an idea of the demon world, and reading it would help you understand the things Ayn, Whitty Whit and TKD have said. Personally, I think it's probable that there's tens of millions of demons.
). God, of course, is very personal, but He doesn't have an 'arch-nemesis' in the form of a fallen angel. It's very unhelpful to imagine the spirit realm as it is portrayed in Frank Peretti's Darkness novels. 
