INQUIRY TOUCHING THE TEMPTER.
Dr. Thomas:
Dear Sir—In your otherwise surpassingly interesting work, styled “Elpis Israel,” you speak of the agent in the original temptation as only an animal. You ascribe to him a huge degree of mentality, without moral obliquity, and making the worthiest use, possible, of his faculties. On this idea and the general subject, I ask—
1. Does not this subject, of the temptation, as you present it, stand in utter contrariety to the testimony of our Lord; “The Devil is a liar from the beginning”?
2. Is not “the beginning,” Genesis 1: 1; Matthew 19: 8; John 1: 1; and John 8: 44, substantially the same? Or do they not refer to the earliest record of the subjects spoken of in the Scriptures? If so, has not “the Devil” a place “in the beginning,” as really as “the Serpent”?
3. Does not the New Testament teach that there is a Tempter, as really as a “Christ”—The Tempted? Matthew 4; Luke 4. He is distinct from, and out of, or away from our Lord. John 14: 30.
4. If such be the representation by inspired teachers, and by the “Faithful and True” himself; how can we be safe in departing from it? —or can we do thus and not act on the same principle of all error?
5. As the term “Dragon” represented anciently the Egyptian Sovereignty or Sovereign (Ezekiel 29: 3) as the term applied to their leading animal, the idolised crocodile—and as Egypt oppressed Israel and opposed God—does it not apply to Rome in Revelation as the oppressor of Israel and the church only on the same principle that “Babylon” does?
6. As Pharaoh, the actual agent in oppressing Israel, was as real as his Dragonic-crocodile representative, why not allow “the Serpent;” and “the Devil” both the precise place they occupy in Scripture?
(On some ancient coins of Augustus, Egypt was represented by a crocodile. Bochart says that Pharaoh in Arabic signifies a crocodile. Isaiah 27: 1; 2: 9; Ezekiel 29: 3—McKnight, Ep. P. 705, Essay 8, Comp. Com.)
An answer will be thankfully received. Your former is general and indefinite; an answer to this would be definite.
Yours in the truth, J. B. COOK. June 19th, 1852.
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THE BIBLE DOCTRINE CONCERNING THE TEMPTER CONSIDERED
NO. 1.
“Jesus partook of flesh and blood, that THROUGH DEATH he might destroy that having the power of death, that is, the devil.”—PAUL.
The “Inquiry touching the Tempter,” appeared in the Advent Harbinger of June 19th, of the current year. The worthy querist is of opinion, that what has been presented in Elpis Israel, on the subject of the Devil and Satan, “is general and indefinite.” That it is general, and does not go argumentatively into the support of the doctrine there exhibited, is indeed the case; nevertheless I think, that what I have set forth is sufficiently definite for the reader to perceive what I believe the scriptures to teach concerning the devil, in the several passages where it is alluded to. However, I do admit with my friend, that what I have said about the Devil and Satan is not as definite as I could have made it. I was not writing upon that topic particularly; nor did I care to say more than was necessary to the comprehension of the general matter of the book. In treating of Israel’s Hope, or the Kingdom of God, I could not avoid saying something of evil, and “that having the power of death,” which the full fruition of that hope is to eradicate from the earth, from society, and from the moral and physical constitution of flesh and blood. But I did not lay a heavy hand upon the subject, knowing how much “the Devil” is respected by some, worshipped by others, and venerated in some way by nearly all. Not that this abstractly considered would have deterred me from giving him his due; for I have no favour for him though he may approach me as a minister of righteousness, a professor of Sacred History, or an angel of light—2 Corinthians 11: 13-15; I see in him only one causing men to fall, and an adversary to the truth, that is, to the gospel of the kingdom in the name of Jesus. I wished to get this all important topic systematically before the British public, as I am now endeavouring to do before the American, in Elpis Israel; therefore, I did not wish to offend their prejudices by being too explicit touching their idol, lest they should close the book before they got at “the things of the kingdom of God.”
I have said little, or nothing that I recollect, in any other writings concerning “His Satanic Majesty.” The time had not come, and no one sought to bring me out upon the subject. I have in past years had so many devils of one sort or another to contend with, that I did not care to increase their host by denying their master’s existence in the popular sense. But, “steadfast in the faith,” I have successfully resisted the scripture devil, and he has fled from me—James 4: 7; 1 Peter 5: 9. The antidikos diabolos, or OPPONENT CAUSING (me) TO FALL, if he could, with all his satellites, are either hors du combat, or so used up, that they have left me free from the necessity of defending myself lest I should be devoured. They have done their worst; and no clamour that they can raise can do more than induce me to serve them up for the entertainment of my readers, by way of recreation in the severer study of the Law. The time is come, then, when the outcries of “the Devil’s” clients may be disregarded. He is, doubtless, a very “potent, grave, and reverend signior” with the world, with whom it is a point of expediency not to offend him, if possible. Men, therefore, like to hear him spoken of with respect; and as the terror of him is very useful in keeping evil doers in awe, and compelling some of them to “seek religion,” they do not like the fear of him diminished: and by way of recommending themselves, we presume, to his tender mercies, if he should happen to get everlasting possession of them, they make a great clamour, and persecute with hard speeches, those who can see no other devil in the Bible than Sin incarnate in flesh and blood, and manifested in the personal, social, and political works of mankind—and no other Satans, than personal, and politically organised, adversaries to the righteous and the truth. But I am not careful to avoid offending “the Devil” or his friends now; neither shall I regard their conclamation. My desire is to make men hate the devil, speak unrevilingly to Satan, and to fear none but God and his Christ; whom to know is love and to obey unto eternal life.
During my residence in London I became acquainted with a physician, somewhat famous in the scientific world and a believer in the kingdom of God, who purchased a copy of Elpis Israel, and at the same time presented me with a pamphlet he had published, entitled “An Inquiry into the existence of a personal Devil.” It consists of twelve lectures and an appendix, making ninety-six octavo pages. It contains much good sense on the subject; and as far as I think its contents in accordance with the scriptures. I shall reproduce them in these columns. In the first lecture are some very excellent remarks on the investigation of truth, which very appropriately precede the examination of the subject, and which I beg leave to introduce in this place in order to propitiate a candid consideration of what I have to say.
“Sound thinking,” says he, “that is, cultivated and well-directed common sense, applied to the discovery of truth, either natural or revealed, has followed the rule, that Nothing ought to be believed as true unless its truth can be demonstrated by an appeal to the facts recorded in the Book of Creation, or to the Book of Revelation.
“The Naturalist, that is, the student of the truths written in the book of creation, says, “To the book of creation: if any man speak not according to this book, it is because there is no light in him.”—(Homo, naturae minister et interpres, tantum facit et intelligit quantum de natura ordine re vel mente observaerit; nec amplius seit, aut potest. —Bacon.)
“The Spiritualist, that is, the student of the truths written in the book of revelation, says, “To the Law and to the Testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them”—Isaiah 8: 20.
“Rigid adherence of late years by the naturalists to the above rule in reference to the subject of natural, or creation-written, truths, has been the cause of immense progress in natural science: and is it not, without any improper presumption, to be inferred, that a similar rigid adherence to this rule in matters relating to the spiritual Bible-written truths, in other words, in matters relating to the moral and religious condition of man, will be attended with equal progress?
“It is a lamentable fact that, in this matter of rigid adherence to this rule of truth-investigation and truth demonstration, “the children” who study the things of the natural world are far in advance of, “are wiser in their generation than are the children” who study the things of the spiritual world.
“It is from this cause that such diversities of opinion prevail among professing christians: an evil not to be remedied, as the Romanists would remedy it, by squeezing all men’s minds into one universal square impudently called the mind of the church; or as Milton describes the patent uniforming process, “starching them into the stiffness of uniformity by tradition.” (Milton’s Prose Works; Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing.) This is not the method; but the only method is to establish as binding upon all christian inquirers the rule already recorded, that Nothing in spiritual matters ought to be believed as true unless its truth can be demonstrated by an appeal to the original scriptures, and this to the satisfaction of every well-constituted, truth-loving mind.
“This rule once generally recognised and practically carried out, will make the candid and ingenuous all of one mind; will establish uniformity, the true uniformity of belief, one founded on the conviction, and not on the suspension of the understanding.
“Sincere men of science are of one mind in regard to chemical, mechanical, and mathematical facts; this oneness having been arrived at by rigidly adhering to the prescribed rule in studying the Book of Creation. What, then, is there in spiritual subjects to prevent men pursuing revelation-recorded truths, arriving at a similar oneness of mind in regard to those truths, recorded by the same Divine Mind, and guided by the same God of Order, as dictated the other book of instruction?
“Taking this rule as the guide, and holding the principles that, revelation being “information from God,” being a truth discovery, its truths are therefore for discovery, and that these truths are to be discovered with a certainty as great as that connected with the creation-truths, it is proposed to consider
THE DEVIL.
“As a consequence of being guided by this rule it will be essential to throw behind us, and as far as possible to banish from our mental condition, all the various notions that have been instilled into our minds, in conjunction with the Devil, by means of nurse-stories, pictures, and even by the pleasing religious romance writer, Bunyan, and by that stupendous-minded poet, Milton. The descriptions, however beautiful, and the notions thence derived, however strong, must be to us as inquirers after truth, as though they were not.
“Knowing, however, how strong early impressions are, how constantly they obtrude themselves whenever the subjects with which they were originally introduced into the mind are brought before the view, we require to be continually on the alert lest when we, in relation to the influence of mental associations, are asleep, they may enter in and divert our minds from the good old way—the Law and the Testimony.
“From the Book of Creation nothing can be learned of the existence of the Devil.
“Formerly, the miseries of the world led some to imagine and to believe in the existence of some powerful malignant spirit. The Magi taught the existence of a good and of an evil spirit, between which existed an irreconcilable enmity: an opinion constantly discernible in the Egyptian and Grecian mythologies; and, modified by circumstances, and consequently, in manifestation, traceable in the mythologies of almost all nations, the more uncivilised the nations the ideas associated being the more absurd.”
Though, as the Doctor truly says, nothing can be learned of the existence of a personal Devil from the Book of Creation, yet the mythological dogma might be deduced from an observation of existing facts. Natural evil, such as earthquakes, floods, pestilence, famine, &c., human wickedness, and death, contrasted with natural good, was seen to prevail everywhere. Inquisitive brains speculating upon this would naturally attribute the one to an evil cause, and the other to a good one; and as these causes were manifestly superhuman, the carnal mind being unenlightened by revelation on the subject, rushed to the conclusion that the causes were two intelligent, powerful, and antagonistic Spirits, one of which, the author of good, they styled Oromazd, and the other, the author of evil, Ahriman. The latter became the Devil of the Gentile world; and as men stand more in awe of the terrific than of the good, they invented superstitions to propitiate the Devil rather than to do honour to the author of all the benefits they enjoy. This was the origin of the dogma of an omnipotent, omnipresent, and personal Devil in the East; whence the nations of the west imported it when their fathers migrated to the “isles of the Gentiles afar off.” They represent him in their statuary and pictures as half goat and half man, with horns and hoofs, and forked tail, and black as soot, with a three pronged pitch-fork in his hand! The three myths, the mythologies of the pagans, of the papists, and of the protestants, represent the object of their terror under the same form substantially; * and all of them assign to him a local habitation in what they call “hell.”--------
* In Leviticus 17: 7 and 2 Chronicles 11: 15, the word “devils” is seirim, rendered daimonai by the Seventy, and signifies He-goats, which were worshipped by the Hebrews in Egypt and Palestine, after the example of the Egyptians. They were adorned as the representatives of satyrs, or wood-demons, supposed to resemble them, and to live in deserts. In Isaiah 13: 21, speaking of Babylon the prophet says, “Satyrs (seirim) shall dance there,” that is, He-goats shall do so. The Egyptian He-Goat worship was adopted by the Greeks and Romans, who adored him as the representative of Pan, the prince-demon of the woods, and principle of all things. Pan is described as a monster in appearance, having two small horns on his head, a ruddy complexion, and flat nose, with the lips, thighs, tail, and feet of a goat. “It is not improbable,” says Parkhurst on the word sahir, “that the christians borrowed their goat-like picture of the Devil, with a tail, horns, and cloven feet, from the heathenish representations of Pan the terrible.” Thus the Devil of the vulgar superstition was dug out of the grave of paganism by the early corrupters of Christianity, the charnel house of “all the abominations of the earth.”-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The things affirmed of the mythic Devil have been commingled with scripture phrases, applicable only to the devil and satan of the Bible; and with tradition. Stripped of the former, the Devil of “Christendom” is essentially the Devil of the Mohammedan and Pagan worlds; the latter being the sire of the Devil of our contemporaries, against which we have more particularly to protest as an existence as fabulous as “the immortal souls,” or “separate spirits” of ancient and modern mesmerism bewitched. These popular fancies are all of one and the same visionary origin—the phronema tou sarkos, THE THINKING OF THE FLESH, termed in the common version of the scriptures, “the carnal mind,” which Paul avers is “enmity against God, and unsubject to his law”—Romans 8: 7. Hence, its thoughts are not God’s thoughts; and its conclusions, in every particular, at variance with his. Show me an opinion, a principle, or an article of faith, originated by the carnal mind, or agreeable to it, and I will prove it to be false by the law and testimony of God. Creation’s book interpreted theologically by speculators, ignorant of the ideas revealed in “the oracles of God,” the word of the prophets and apostles, is the source of all the foolish notions which have perverted the public mind in regard to religious subjects. We must purge ourselves from these upon all topics, that of the Devil among the rest, if we would bring our thoughts into harmony with the thoughts of God.
The mythic devil-dogma of the Gentiles, I have said, has been combined with tradition. Between Oromazd and Ahriman, that is, between God and the Devil, say the Orientals and their disciples of the west, “there is an irreconcilable enmity.” This doctrine of “enmity” is a truth handed down from Noah, to go no further back, and misapplied. The irreconcilable enmity is that which God said he would put between the Serpent and the Woman; and between the Woman’s Seed and the Serpent’s Seed; that is, between the serpent-adherents of falsehood, and the righteous constituents of the Bride; and between the Chief of the political organization of the serpent-community, and the Great Captain and Husband of the Bride—Genesis 3: 15. These are the two great parties into which mankind were to be divided; and between whom there was to be irreconcilable enmity, until one or the other of them should be exterminated from the earth. The two chiefs are the Heads of each contending party contemporary with each other upon the earth—contemporary at the bruising of the heel of the one; contemporary also at the bruising of the Head of the other: two adverse POWERS incarnated in two irreconcilably hostile organizations of mankind. The people of the east, though “become vain in their imaginations, and darkened in their foolish heart,” still retained this tradition derived from their ancestors, when, with “a mind void of judgment,” they fabricated their theory of Oromazd and his enemy Ahriman. They did not retain God’s knowledge in its purity, but perverted it, and turned it into a mythology of the Devil.
The believers in the Devil of the Gentiles could do no more than they have done towards explaining the origin of the world’s miseries. The thinking of the flesh attributed their origin to the God-hating malevolence of a personal devil existent before the formation of man; the Bible, on the contrary, refers them all to SIN as their cause, and to divinely appointed EVIL as the punishment of sin. The popular notion is a clumsy effort of the carnal mind to explain things too high for it; and the scripture testimony it adduces to sanctify its absurdity only exposes it to contempt. It tells us that this pre-existent immortal Devil was “Lucifer, son of the morning,” who “fell from heaven!”—Isaiah 14: 12—(Alluding to the Devil a writer says, “the height of capacity in Lucifer only increased the fall of that Son of the morning.”) Would any one that understands the prophets be so infatuated as to dream of proving the pre-adamic existence of the Devil by such a passage as this? The record concerning Lucifer is part of a prophecy of the overthrow of Nebuchadnezzar’s dynasty by the Medes and Persians, commencing with the beginning of the thirteenth of Isaiah, and ending at the twenty-seventh verse inclusive of the next chapter. Lucifer is Belshazzar, who was so named 181 years before his fall, because he was the light-bearer, or sun, of the Chaldean heaven. The prophet, in vision, seeing him prostrate as “a carcase trodden under feet,” exclaims, “Is this the man that made the earth to tremble, that did shake kingdoms; that made the world as a wilderness, and destroyed the cities thereof?” How dark must that mind be that can press a prophecy of the fall of a man from the throne of a pagan empire, into the service of demonstrating the existence of a personal Devil before the creation of man upon the earth! What absurdity is too great for the credulity of the carnal mind after this!
The Bible doctrine of the devil is its teaching concerning sin. This is certainly an important subject, and one which it is desirable every one should understand. The Gentiles do not understand the teaching of the scriptures concerning Sin; it is impossible, therefore, that they can know any thing about the devil and satan exhibited in the testimony of God. Sin is the synonym of devil in the text we placed at the head of this article; I do not mean it to be inferred, however, that I hold that the word sin is the meaning of the words devil and satan wherever they occur in the English version of the scriptures. The words, devil and devils, occur about one hundred and twenty times in the English Bible, but they are by no means in the original scriptures. Two distinct words are used; and in eighty-two passages of the one hundred and twenty, the word employed is quite distinct from that which, in the remaining thirty-eight and the above text among the number, is the representative of the word devil in the common translation. In the eighty-two texts the word is daimon, and its derivatives, which ought never to be translated devil either in the sense of a personal devil or of sin. Of these eighty-two only four belong to the writings called “The Old Testament,” in which it is devils and not devil. In the thirty-eight passages the original word is diabolos. Now, if the word devil be the correct rendering of diabolos, it is certain that it cannot be the proper interpretation of daimon; and consequently to render daimon by devil must lead into error. I do not, therefore, affirm that sin is synonymous with devil and devils in those texts which have daimon for their representative in the Greek; but that where the original is diabolos the radical idea is sin. I conclude, then, that distinct Greek words being used in the eighty-two texts, and the thirty-eight texts, the ideas represented in the two classes are distinct, although rendered by the same word in English; and that consequently, all arguments in relation to the Devil, as derived from the eighty-two, would be deceptive and of no weight, because the Devil is not referred to therein at all.
The thirty-eight texts in which diabolos occurs are—Matthew 4: 1, 5, 8, 11; 13: 39; 25: 41: Luke 4: 2-3, 5-6, 13; 8: 12: John 6: 70; 8: 44; 13: 2: Acts 10: 38; 13: 10: Ephesians 4: 27; 6: 11: 1 Timothy 3: 6-7, 11: 2 Timothy 2: 26; 3: 3: Titus 2: 3: Hebrews 2: 14: James 4: 7: 1 Peter 5: 8: 1 John 3: 8, three times in this verse: Jude 9; Revelation 2: 10; 12: 9, 12; 20: 2, 10.
In our prefatory text the words are ton to kratos echonta tou thanatou, toutesti, ton diabolon—“the having the power of the death, that is, the devil.” Ton echonta is masculine to agree with diabolon, not because the thing having the power of death is a male; but because the word by custom of the Greek tongue is in that gender. The thing having the power of death is it not him; unless by prosopopeia the it is converted into a person, as in this text—Romans 7: 13, kath hyperboleen hamartolos, pre-eminently a sinner. This diabolos, or devil, whatever it may mean, the apostle says, Jesus came to destroy. It is therefore, not an immortal devil; but one which will sooner or later be annihilated by the power of Jesus, the Woman’s Seed. To destroy the devil is to take away the devil from the world; that is, to take away the Sin of the World; hence, said John the Baptist concerning Jesus, “Behold the Lamb of God who taketh away the sin off the world.” This is the mission of Jesus, to take away every curse from the earth—Revelation 22: 3; 21: 5; and certainly when this is accomplished, Diabolos and all his works will be destroyed—1 John 3: 3.
Now, to accomplish this great work of destroying the devil and his works, Paul says, Jesus became flesh and blood, therefore subject to death like his brethren, that he might die. I can understand this if the devil mean sin; but on the hypothesis that diabolos means the Gentile Devil, I confess I can see no sense in it. Why should Jesus become flesh and blood to destroy such a devil as the world believes in? Why should he become mortal to conquer the immortal Devil? —The devil which men suppose is to torment their species in fire and brimstone in all eternity? Will any one of his friends make this mystery intelligible, if they can? If the devil to be destroyed be such an one as is supposed, Jesus ought to have appeared in the nature of angels, and not in the weakly nature of the seed of Abraham. He would then have been strong and invulnerable; and an overmatch for the foul fiend perhaps; though if mere strength were required, I see not why the angels could not have given him his quietus thousands of years ago.
But no. The angels, even all the hosts of them, could not, and cannot, destroy diabolos, or the Bible-devil, which torments our race, upon the principles laid down by eternal wisdom. This diabolos is the thing that has “the power of the death,” which subjects all the living to corruption. It has this power now, even over the saints, though the King of Saints is no longer holden of it. It will retain this power till their resurrection, when they will be subject to its control no more. It will still, however, retain its hold upon humanity for a thousand years longer; but when that long period is accomplished, the rest of the dead, who are to inhabit the earth for ever with the Saints and their King, will be extricated from its deadly embrace; for “the last enemy, DEATH, shall be destroyed.” Ah! Death is the last enemy; yes, and the first enemy was Sin, who introduced it into our world; for “the wages of Sin is Death.” Here are cause and effect face to face. Human tradition makes the popular Devil the first enemy and the last, the Alpha and the Omega of all their woes; but not so the Bible, Sin was the first, and Death will be the last; because Sin being taken away, Death, its penalty, will be abolished as a matter of course. As far as possibility is concerned the matter might be reversed. If death were taken away and not sin, sin would then be immortal—Diabolos would live for ever—a result, however, that cannot be; because it was to prevent the immortality of sin on the earth that the flesh and blood called Adam and Eve, were expelled from Paradise—Genesis 3: 22-23. Sin must be destroyed. This is a victory that must be obtained before God can with honour to himself abolish death. But the destruction of sin has a deeper meaning than simply putting down rebellion. Death cannot be abolished so long as sin exists in the flesh; for “the body is dead because of sin”—Romans 8: 10—it is the physical principle within us that makes us mortal. But enough for the present. In the next number I will resume the subject.
EDITOR.
