Satan - who was he in the book of Job?

[Stranger]

face2face

See, I told you that you were on a fools errand.

Stranger

 

[pia]

well you say that, but i have to believe that you saw a vision of Christ because that is what reflects your heart, what you were seeking, whether it was by name or not, even just as a concept, a la Saul/Paul.

Wasn't just a vision, at one point I was leaning against Him, He looked like a fairly normal person, (But He had given me the understanding of who he was/is) except it was as if He was standing in sunshine all the time, whereas it was a dark room and the middle of the night...

 

[pia]

boy, been there, done that :/

?

 

[pia]

oh, stop. You are the spirit realm, and as a mother you are surely more sensitive to it than many. You 'kept the peace' among your kids, you created the spirit of Christmas and other holidays, and it was you who protected the sensibilities of one child when another was being oblivious to them. right? That is the spirit realm.

I was like 30 before i realized the effect i was having on a room; Why i didn't learn that as a kid i don't know, but when i did learn it it came with the understanding that that is spirit, that part of a person that either clears a room or maybe fills it up, and near as i can tell the first one is mostly unconscious while the second one is conscious, although people seem to be on a sliding scale there too

I agree, we do have spirits within us..But I also believe other beings who were never born according to blood and water, but only made as spirits, exist.....

 

[face2face]

I agree, we do have spirits within us..But I also believe other beings who were never born according to blood and water, but only made as spirits, exist.....

Plato would agree.

 

[bbyrd009]

?

ha, it is a description of Churchianity, or what happens to hypocrites "seeking" Christ from fear of hell, to save their own skin iow, or, how else to put it...a description of a perfectly normal, mundane process that pretty much everyone goes through in "church," where despite all proclamations to the contrary, Law and Sin are front and center, hence the seven worse demons. Imo

 

[bbyrd009]

I agree, we do have spirits within us..But I also believe other beings who were never born according to blood and water, but only made as spirits, exist.....

i certainly agree, i remember one a best friend's mother made...or rather i don't remember, lol, i've forgotten it now, some really nice thing she did at her house, a simple thing, didn't think i'd ever forget it, hmm. The point being maybe that yes, we have a spirit within us, but we can also project a spirit without, that is as real as any other spirit, and is equally "us."

are they "beings?" Yes, they are certainly at least "being," as long as they exist. Are they ensouled? No, i don't think so.

 

[pia]

Are they ensouled? No, i don't think so.

Hey 'bbyrd' sorry can you please make that a little clearer for me ? I think mankind forgets that it is our spirits that were created in the image ( spirit as our Father ) and likeness ( His character, and way of being ) of our Father, and then clothed with flesh, for the single purpose to be able to condemn sin to the flesh, that our spirits might be saved....
So I most certainly do believe that our spirits can exist outside of our bodies.....but I also believe that other beings were created as ONLY spirits, thus there would be no remedy for them, if they turned their backs on God, UNLIKE US...
Are we in agreement on this point? If not please could you write a little of what you believe ?

 

[pia]

ha, it is a description of Churchianity, or what happens to hypocrites "seeking" Christ from fear of hell, to save their own skin iow, or, how else to put it...a description of a perfectly normal, mundane process that pretty much everyone goes through in "church," where despite all proclamations to the contrary, Law and Sin are front and center, hence the seven worse demons. Imo

Ah yes lol...Now I'm with you...It is astonishing, is it not ? That the very thing we are told we are saved from becoming the most bitterly contested Truth from our Lord.....Not good !

 

[bbyrd009]

but I also believe that other beings were created as ONLY spirits, thus there would be no remedy for them, if they turned their backs on God, UNLIKE US...
Are we in agreement on this point? If not please could you write a little of what you believe ?

hmm. Be better if i thought about this one for a minute first--actually what i have to do is stop thinking and go pull weeds or something lol--but i would like to begin here by pointing out that you create spirits all the time, ok, and they are "being," therefore they are beings, yes, but they are not ensouled, they do not have personalities, or opinions on other matters, etc.

People anthropomorphize, or personify satan, or Michael, etc, because they are named, but you name spirits all the time, too, you "take the temperature of a room," or recognize when a movement has "gotten a life of its own," or you maybe "created a monster," etc. These are all much more valid perspectives than the religious ones about spirits, at least imo, and in my experience this makes deciphering some thorny Scripture quite a bit more understandable.

 

[bbyrd009]

Ah yes lol...Now I'm with you...It is astonishing, is it not ? That the very thing we are told we are saved from becoming the most bitterly contested Truth from our Lord.....Not good !

ya, i guess the word "sanctimonious" comes from this? But even someone practicing humility has to deal with the pride some new understanding brings, i think? Maybe not everyone, dunno.

 

[pia]

hmm. Be better if i thought about this one for a minute first--actually what i have to do is stop thinking and go pull weeds or something lol--but i would like to begin here by pointing out that you create spirits all the time, ok, and they are "being," therefore they are beings, yes, but they are not ensouled, they do not have personalities, or opinions on other matters, etc.

People anthropomorphize, or personify satan, or Michael, etc, because they are named, but you name spirits all the time, too, you "take the temperature of a room," or recognize when a movement has "gotten a life of its own," or you maybe "created a monster," etc. These are all much more valid perspectives than the religious ones about spirits, at least imo, and in my experience this makes deciphering some thorny Scripture quite a bit more understandable.

I do see what you're saying here, and there is certainly something to that.....we influence everything around us by our thought, words and deeds, as well as the people around us.....But I mean a different kind, I think you have realized.
One example which immediately came to mind, is the story about the naked man on the island whom Jesus releases of a Legion of spirits/demons Mk 5:7-13 and Lk 8:27-33.........It is not that they are named as unclean spirits or demons that make me believe they are separate.........It is that they SAY to Jesus, that they are aware that He is The Son of God, and they ask Him not to torment them before their time, which He then agrees to......If they were merely manifestations of ourselves, how could this have been so ?

 

[bbyrd009]

It is that they SAY to Jesus, that they are aware that He is The Son of God, and they ask Him not to torment them before their time, which He then agrees to......If they were merely manifestations of ourselves, how could this have been so ?

imo that is a parable about us, making a choice to either be a pig, or follow Christ, and the demons here are strictly the scapegoats. They are personifications of our divided nature, our fallen state, "Legion," told in such a way so as to allow a reader to not identify with the possessed should that be what they desire to do (keep fooling themselves, iow). So iow they "say" what is really in our hearts, in essence, but a device is used because people need scapegoats, at least until they do not.

After all, who would be able to associate themselves with "You are a conflicted pig-sucker who only thinks of himself, and when you do think of God it is mostly about assuaging your fear of torment?" When we have only just now been assured that we are like one of the guys doing the "exorcism," right, and preferably Christ Himself, we are being told to think of ourselves as, in that parable. Isn't that the impression you get? Maybe i'm wrong there, dunno.

So iow that guy is me, explaining the consequences of my next decision, although there may certainly be other valid reflections there.

i would note that if the story is truly about a man in history possessed by demons, then it is pointless to put it in the Bible, because possessed people do not read the Bible, and the Bible was not written for pigs. Pearls are not tossed before swine iow. I am also Cain, and Esau, all those guys, otherwise those passages are also pointless.

Of course all of that Scripture is spiritually removed from us on like day 1 after we profess, right? All of those passages refer to "lost" people, so we don't even have to pay them much attention, except maybe to be familiar enough with them so that we can use them to judge others.

@amadeus might have a good perspective here, i keep trying to fix something in here and it keeps just getting longer lol

 

[bbyrd009]

But I mean a different kind

you might note that you were taught this "different kind," but you cannot observe them directly, right.
And i grant you that Scripture even seems to encourage this. The authors know that you will tend to associate yourself with the good, and dissociate yourself from the bad, and this knowing is taken advantage of in the authorship, unless i am badly mistaken.

Mk 5:7-13 and Lk 8:27-33 are as useful for their contrasts to me as anything else, you might note how being sent "from the region" is equated with "to the Abyss," mirroring our tendency to insulate, even though we are told to "go," and there are other interesting elements, that the populace there was "scared" of the results of the "exorcism" is telling, i mean does that make sense to you?

 

[bbyrd009]

If they were merely manifestations of ourselves, how could this have been so ?

i'd like to suggest that we were raised to revere the Bible, worship it really, and trained to read It as a literal history.
Like maybe magic used to exist or something, but has somehow vanished or something, right.

doesn't hurt to read against that grain for a time, and approach the Bible from a different perspective. If it yields fruit, great, and if it does not, the literal interp certainly is not going to disappear anytime soon i guess.

 

[bbyrd009]

"The Bible wasnt written to us, it was written for us"
@face2face nice

 

[amadeus]

@pia @bbyrd009

I have mentioned on this forum, I believe, that men are all beasts at the start. Perhaps the exceptions to that, other than Jesus, would be Adam and Eve before they sinned. The number of scriptures involved in a full study of the beast(s) of men is tremendous. Consider all the OT verses describing the unclean and clean animals and their treatment.

"I said in mine heart concerning the estate of the sons of men, that God might manifest them, and that they might see that they themselves are beasts.
For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth them: as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath; so that a man hath no preeminence above a beast: for all is vanity." Ecc 3:18-19

People want to have been made in God's image and so the scriptures say it was in Gen 1:26-17, but when Adam and Eve sinned against God they received not Life but death. From that day they were dead and is not God the God of the living rather than the God of the dead? The dead were not and are not in God's image.

What would suppose this verse means?
"For to him that is joined to all the living there is hope: for a living dog is better than a dead lion." Ecc 9:4

Consider the Syrophoenician woman [see Matt 15] who Jesus effectively called a "dog", but though she may have been a dog, she was a dog with faith was she not? That dead dog who obtained hope when she was given crumbs to eat from under the Master's table. She abased herself and accepted without complaint the name that Jesus called her. She received hope that she did not have before.

Consider also what those unclean and clean beasts that were saved in the ark built by Noah were. I won't say they were not animals, but neither would I say that they were not men.

It is certainly not unusual to hear people to speak of others in a derogatory manner as if they were beasts. Maybe they are not really exaggering in their descriptions. Why would God have saved beasts in the ark anyway? Could there be an underlying meaning to the salvation of the unclean and clean animals in that ark?

Why did Jesus call some of the physical/natural children of Abraham children of the devil? There are all kinds of descriptions in scripture of beasts or devils or pigs or goats. If we can understand them all perhaps would weave a complete picture for us? But... as Paul writes it:

"For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known." I Cor 13:12

To see the picture clearly we must begin with a vision of it: Yes, we must!

"Where there is no vision, the people perish: but he that keepeth the law, happy is he." Prov 29:18

So who are the so-called lower animals really and who is it that is placed at the top level in Noah's ark?

So what are devils and demons and where are they located? Does not scripture in more than one place speak of men as devils or satan or possession by such?

Were not the pigs into which the Legion entered before running off a cliff, among the unclean beasts that could not be eaten according to the law God gave to Moses?

Man really wants to move up the ladder toward God, but he cannot do it:

"And he put forth a parable to those which were bidden, when he marked how they chose out the chief rooms; saying unto them,
When thou art bidden of any man to a wedding, sit not down in the highest room; lest a more honourable man than thou be bidden of him;
And he that bade thee and him come and say to thee, Give this man place; and thou begin with shame to take the lowest room.
But when thou art bidden, go and sit down in the lowest room; that when he that bade thee cometh, he may say unto thee, Friend, go up higher: then shalt thou have worship in the presence of them that sit at meat with thee.
For whosoever exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted." Luke 14:7-11

We, like the Syrophoenician woman must first recognize that we are beasts, unclean beasts at that, before we can really begin killing off our beasts, the beast which are the old man of whom Paul writes.

In the OT we read the commandments of God give to Moses and one them says "Thou shalt not kill" [Exo 20:13] yet here we are expected to kill our old man:

"To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:" Ecc 3:1

" A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;" Ecc 3:3

The time to kill is now for you and I, and what is it we are to kill?

"Wisdom hath builded her house, she hath hewn out her seven pillars:
She hath killed her beasts; she hath mingled her wine; she hath also furnished her table." Prov 9:1-2

Before the sacrifice of Jesus this was one of those impossible things for man. Jesus so that we might have more abundantly Life [see John 10:10]. He paid the price and opened the Door/Gate that was closed and guarded so that we might approach and partake of that other tree that Adam and Eve missed out on... The Tree of Life. The Tree of Life in located within and also at of the Ark. How are we to get there? [Refer back to Luke 14:7-11.] We have to be prepared first for those with beastly natures [dead things] will do beastly things [sinful or dead works], will they not?

We definitely have not exhausted all of the meanings that God has placed in the scriptures for us. But... if we start at the bottom and ask of Him, will He not lift us up? No beasts or demons or devils allowed!

 

[bbyrd009]

" A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;" Ecc 3:3

The time to kill is now for you and I, and what is it we are to kill?

"Wisdom hath builded her house, she hath hewn out her seven pillars:
She hath killed her beasts; she hath mingled her wine; she hath also furnished her table." Prov 9:1-2

hmm, i have heard of seven different beasts representing sins ha, zing, do we live in a miracle or what, who can even lie anymore lol.

Also related to the Letters to the Seven Churches i guess

 

[amadeus]

@bbyrd009
Well God's number according to many is seven. See seven spirits of Rev 3:1 relating to Isaiah 11:2.

I don't know about the reverse for man's number, for his number, at least after he sinned, is six. I suspect that the ideas of seven different beasts and sins comes from a source other than God. The Book of Revelation speaks of 4 beasts, not seven or even six. Maybe someone else will be able to tie the four in...

The Seven Churches is where God is working to bring them up to snuff so from them He can take out His Bride who is to be not only virgin but completely undefiled and ready for the Bridegroom [Jesus].

 

[bbyrd009]

@bbyrd009
Well God's number according to many is seven. See seven spirits of Rev 3:1 relating to Isaiah 11:2.

I don't know about the reverse for man's number, for his number, at least after he sinned, is six. I suspect that the ideas of seven different beasts and sins comes from a source other than God. The Book of Revelation speaks of 4 beasts, not seven or even six. Maybe someone else will be able to tie the four in...

The Seven Churches is where God is working to bring them up to snuff so from them He can take out His Bride who is to be not only virgin but completely undefiled and ready for the Bridegroom [Jesus].

ya, i thought that was maybe apocryphal, i wonder if the seven deadly sins can be related to the admonishments to the Seven Churches? hmm