BH: “But it may also be that the serpent did actually talk by a miracle of the enemy.”
I don’t believe that the Devil can work miracles.
BH: “For the devil essentially did a miracle before Pharaoh and Moses and he is said to do miracles in the end times (to deceive others).”
I don’t believe this is true. The apparent miracles done by Pharoah’s sorcerer’s were tricks, what we would call stage magic or legerdemain.
While I too balk at the term, 'miracle', when applied to the Devil, technically, I can't deny its applicability. 'Miracle' is generally meant to refer to a good, or at least neutral, sort of thing.
But you are basically saying the spirit world cannot interact with the material world, are you not? There are millions, maybe billions, in third world countries that would beg to disagree with you.
The devil has (had?) reason to believe he was the most powerful of all angels. I don't know his 'natural' limitations but it seems obvious his strongest limitations have to do with the restraints God imposes on him. There is, of course the natural fact that he cannot do "new". He can't create --only destroy. He is the father of sin, and sin can only negate, not create.
Here is something I consider intensely interesting: Let's say, for the sake of discussion, that he has the ability to move things around, or even to transform molecules into other molecules. If so, it would seem he rarely finds the need to do so, except for purposes that God allows. If that is so, then he finds perversion and destruction of good, and corruption by influence of minds and hearts, to be both more effective and more useful to him than fear through the senses, or than a human's merely intellectual choice of the more attractive. Like the Spirit of God, it would seem, he finds work internal to the human individual more useful than external.
Logically, the fact that he does not often do what we might call 'miracle', or what you might call 'stage tricks', doesn't mean he can't. Interestingly, though, I find the fact that God doesn't usually convince people of his existence by means of miracle equally compelling.
So, it does not seem, then, to be through empirical influence of the intellect, after all, that God, (nor the Devil, for that matter), suppose to accomplish his (their) goals. No doubt God is interested in the heart, the soul, and the Devil is, too. Perhaps, after all, the intellect and will are more readily tied to each other by access through another door than the senses!
Both God and the Devil are interested in the intellect, no doubt! But the mind and the intellect are not quite the same thing. The devil's work can be seen all around us, in leading people to think THEY are the masters of their intellect --in fact, masters even of their own fate-- though on further logical consideration they should be able to see this is not so. God, on the other hand, doesn't even so much work at convincing anyone of the facts for their consideration so that they can make good choices, as he does in changing their hearts, their desires and purposes, so that they become one with him. (Funny thing is, only God knows in whom he will do this --not even the Devil knows.)
But to return to the OP, and your comments on that line, my guess at this point is that you don't believe in the inspiration/ authority of Scripture.
