The Devil - His Beginning
Satan hath here a mighty kingdom (Matt 12:26), opposed to that of Christ in chapter 1:20,21, consisting of men and angels, inhabiters of earth and air; wherein he had the start of Christ carrying the world before him, four thousand years previous to the incarnation. Zanchy, the most judicious of the protestant writers, and Suarez, the best of school-men, suppose with some probability, that the angels had notice of the setting up a kingdom for Christ (predestinated to come by the Second Person's assumption of human nature) and his therein being the head of all principality and power, from whom men and angels should have their grace; and that the sin of the fallen spirits was refusing subjection to this king; and that thus they "kept not their first estate but left their own habitation," voluntarily quitting that station God had set them in, and leaving their dwelling in heaven to go and
set up an opposition kingdom here below. -Thomas Goodwin.
WE HAVE NO genesis of the devil in the Bible as a direct statement. The Bible is not his full history. It gives no intimation of his birth and no description of his creation. The Bible is only concerned with the devil as he has part in the great crises of man's history, and only gives us occasional glimpses of him in his work of ruin and death as explanatory, or as putting his acts in striking contrast and opposition to the works and aims of Christ. There are not lacking in these intimations and inferences, sidelights which indicate an original purity, a high relation to God, and a heavenly character and conduct. It is not a fanciful conjecture that he was and is the head of the angels who kept not their first estate. Peter in his first Epistle gives the angel crises and fall as one of the signal events which illustrate God's justice, its certainty and fearfulness. He says, “God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness to be reserved unto judgment." Jude speaks after the same order of God's inflexible wrath when he tells us that “the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day." The Revelation of John adds its testimony with addition to this fact: "And there was war in heaven; Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels, and prevailed not; neither was there place found any more in heaven. And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world; he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him."
To the Word of God we must go, assured that we will find the traces of the devil's steps and the unfolding of his conduct whose bad schemes have eclipsed so much of earth's brightness and blasted so much of its promise and hope.
If we have the child-like spirit of docility and trust, if we will " lay aside all filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness, and receive with meekness the engrafted word," we will find satisfaction and illumination, not satisfaction as to curiosity, nor illumination in the niceties or subtleties of philosophy, but satisfaction and illumination in all things which pertain to the highest and weightiest truth for the thoughtful, trustful and prayerful mind.
In the Bible we have the facts and history of man's redemption. Incidentally or essentially, other worlds and other beings are brought prominently on the stage of redemption purposes and plans. These revealed facts whether incidental or essential, whether casual or regular, are to our faith what the facts of nature are to the student of nature. They must shape theories and settle opinions. They must not be set aside, for weighty and final they must be. Reason must not ignore nor reject them, but must lay them deep and solid as the foundation of all investigation, the basis of every hypothesis. These Bible facts demand our faith, though we may not be able to reach out beyond into the unknown regions where harmony reigns.
The Word of God brings clearly to light the unseen world, its persons, places, facts and history, not, we say, in minute detail, but full enough to provoke thought and reflection, and to create and inspire faith.
The Bible nowhere enters into an argument to prove the person and being of God. It assumes His being and reveals His person and character. Without preface or introduction, the Bible brings God before us in all His majesty and omnipotence. God is at the world's beginning, and He it was who created the beginning of all things. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." How sublime and awe-inspiring our first glimpse of God! God is revealed not by argument but by work. We learn what He is from what He does.
In like manner is the revelation of the devil. He is before us in full person without introduction or ceremony as the evil one, a graduate in the work of guile and evil The curtain is drawn and the chief actor is in full dress. A world is at stake, man is to be seduced, Eden is to be blasted. No light is shed upon his past history, no knowledge of the school where he learned his dire trade. He was before earthly life. Eden does not date his birth, and is not the first chapter of his history, nor is it the first trial of his hellish art. We have no access to the archives of the past. Eden bounds our horizon, and the devil is there. Henceforth his history is to run parallel with our race. Man is to be the object of his schemes, his ruin, and his ambition. Earth is to be the favourite scene of his exploits. He is at the cradle of man, and has much to do in shaping his character and determining his destiny.
The Bible is a revelation, not a philosophy nor a poem, not a science. It reveals things and persons as they are, living and acting outside the range of earthly vision or natural discovery.
Bible revelations are not against reason but above reason, for the uses of faith, man's highest faculty. The powers of reason are not able to discover these Bible facts, and yet they are for reason's use, its light, strength and higher elevation, but more essentially to form, to nourish and to perfect faith.
The Bible reveals the devil as a person, not a mere figure, not an influence simply, not a personification only, but a real person. In the eighth chapter of John, Christ is arraigning the cruelty and murderous malignity, the falsehood, deceit and hypocrisy of the Jews. Jesus says, "Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do." He was a murderer from the beginning and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. Many myths may have gathered around the person of the devil by the accretion of ages, much of poetry, sentiment and tradition, and even our fears may have caricatured his person, exaggerated his character, and coloured his conduct. But there is truth in regard to him, naked and simple truth.
There is much truth that needs to be learned about the devil, and no age needs the plain, unvarnished truth about the devil more than this age. We need the light of that truth as a warning, as an incentive to vigilance, and an inspiration to effort. We need the knowledge of the enemy, his character, presence and power to arouse men to action, for this is vital to victory.
It is wholly at variance with any Christian idea of the perfection of truthfulness in Christ, who was truth itself, to suppose Him to have used such plain and solemn words repeatedly before His disciples and the Jews in encouragement and furtherance of a lying superstition.
A denial of the reality of demonical possessions on the part of anyone who believes the Gospel narrative to be true and inspired, may justly be regarded as simply and plainly inconceivable.
When the devil fell, others fell with him. This is the lesson of God's Word.
Of the number of these fallen spirits we have no census. In Ephesians, quoting from the Revised Version, in the summary of these unseen foes we have “spiritual hosts," an uncounted, uncountable number.
How innumerable they are, we cannot tell. The demoniac of Gadara was named “legion because many devils were entered into him." A legion if exact was somewhat less than six thousand. Their number must be great, enabling them to spare so many to swarm into and possess one man, or even seven in one woman, as Mary Magdalene. The statement in Revelation that the great red dragon with "his tail did draw the third part of the stars of heaven and did cast them to the earth," may be a reference to the fall of the angels and their number.
The Bible is clear in many references and some direct statements that the devil has a host of angelic followers who are ready, eager in their efforts to hurt man and defeat God's Kingdom on earth.