Reading Time: 5 minutesQuestion 8050. The phrase snare of the devil comes from Paul’s letters to Timothy, and it is worth noticing how ordinary the context is. He is not describing an exorcism or a supernatural encounter. He is talking about the appointment of church leaders and the handling of people who oppose the truth. A snare is…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 8049. Of all the titles Scripture gives him, Satan the accuser is the one that touches ordinary Christians most often. We may never face a dramatic temptation or anything resembling a spiritual encounter, and yet most believers I know have spent a bad night under a voice reciting their failures back to them with…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 8048. The words are among the most striking Jesus ever spoke to a friend. “Simon, Simon, behold, Satan demanded to have you, that he might sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail.” The request to sift Peter was made, it was granted, and the Lord…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 8047. People ask me whether Satan can appear in dreams more often than almost any other question in this area, and they usually ask quietly, after a bad night, when they are not sure whether they are being silly. They are not being silly. A dream can leave a residue that lasts for days….
Reading Time: 5 minutesQuestion 8046. Paul says it directly: Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. It comes in the middle of a painful passage where he is defending his ministry against men who had arrived in Corinth with better manners, better rhetoric and a different gospel, and it explains how they had got a hearing at…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 8045. Can Satan perform miracles? The short answer is that he can produce genuine signs and wonders, that Scripture says so plainly, and that this is one of the reasons we are told to test everything rather than to be impressed by displays of power. A miracle is not by itself proof that God…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 8044. Paul assumes that Satan’s schemes can be recognised. He tells the Corinthians that we are not ignorant of his designs and he tells the Ephesians to put on the whole armour of God so that they can stand against them. Neither statement makes any sense unless the enemy works to a pattern that…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 8043. The name Beelzebub turns up in the Gospels on the lips of people trying to destroy Jesus, and it has a long history behind it before it ever gets there. It began as the title of a local god in a Philistine city, picked up a sneer along the way, and ended up…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 8042. Ask most people where the name Lucifer comes from and they will tell you it is the devil’s proper name, the one he had before he fell. It is a reasonable assumption, since that is how hymns, poems and films have used it for centuries. It is also not quite what the Bible…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 8041. Whether Satan is a literal being or a poetic way of describing the darker side of human nature is not an idle question, and I get asked it far more often than you might expect. Sceptics raise it as an objection. Believers raise it because they have grown uncomfortable with the way some…