If yes:
1. What is he/ it?
2. Why doesn't God simply destroy Satan or is he not all powerful
3. Do Christians really believe in a being called Satan, or just in the possibility that some people are capable of doing bad things?
4. Where does Satan exist, it can't be in heaven, it can't be in Hell so where is it?
I know several committed Christians, and they seem to be confused about whether Satan is "real" or not, can anyone explain what Christianity teaches, and incidentally does Islam and Judaism have the same entity in their faith?
God had a plan from the beginning of time to save everyone that would accept His help and condemn everyone that would refuse God’s Help. This does not mean specifically you, but could include you if God knew your free will decision to accept His help that would come about in human future, but this may not really be future for God.
Satan has a purpose in all this.
If you don’t start with the objectives you can never see the purpose and that goes for everything:
Everything can be understood from the objectives:
Man’s objective seems to be to obtain and grow this Godly type Love to fulfill the mission (statement) of Love God and secondly others with all our heart, soul, mind, and energy.
Our “objective” while here on earth is to just accept God’s gift as it was given as pure charity.
God is not trying to get you to do something, but is trying to give you something.
That “something” is the most powerful force in all universes since it is the force that compels God to do all He does.
God’s Love compelled God to create beings that could Love like He Loves and did it for the sake of those few that would accept His Love.
There are some things that God just cannot do like create a being that was never created and the one important to us is instinctively create us with Godly type Love since that would be robotic type Love. God will also not force his love on us since that would be unloving on God’s part (there has to be reasonable alternatives to make it a choice [the perceived pleasures of sin]). The easiest way for us to get this Love is through accepting it as a pure charitable gift. The problem being humans (due in part to the needed survival instinct) do not like accepting Charity from a Giver that paid a huge price for the gift.
The easiest way for humans to accept God’s charity (Love) is out of a huge need and that need is the relief from the burden of hurting others in the past (sin). By accepting God’s forgiveness we accept God’s Love (mercy/grace/charity) and thus we will Love much since Jesus has taught us (we also see this in our own lives) “…he that is forgiven much will Love much…”
Once we accept Godly type Love, we can truly Love and have the privilege and honor of Loving God (the forgiver) and others (God’s children) with all our heart, soul, mind, and energy.
This Godly type Love is defined by Jesus’ words and deeds (you can also use 1 Cor 13 and 1 John 4).
Since God is “Love” and part of the definition of Godly type Love is unselfishness God is totally unselfish? If God is totally unselfish, He will do and allow all He can to help those that are just willing to accept His help fulfill their objective (Love). That “all” includes: Christ to go to the cross, satan to roam the earth, tragedies of all kind, hell, evil, and even sin.
Will we know people do not like to accept charity especially from a giver that paid a huge price? People will try to earn the gift, pay back the gift, be more deserving of the gift than the next person or just say they got the gift without having to accept it. The easiest way to accept the gift is through accepting God’s forgiveness (this is after you have sinned) since forgiveness is charity, grace, mercy Love. AND Jesus has taught us “…he that is forgiven much will Love much…”
The problem is God wants us to be like He is (God’s Love is compelling Him to create beings that can Love like He Loves and made these beings for the sake of those that will accept His Love).
If we continue to refuse God’s Love and really do not want to Love unselfishly, where is there for us to go? Heaven is one huge Love feast so we would not be happy there and God wants us to be happy.
Satan:
Satan is not around to give us someone to fight or to just help us to “know” good by seeing the contrast.
Satan helps us to reach the point of outwardly visibly sinning and makes us aware of our sinful attitudes.
You see: SIN IS NOT THE PROBLEM. God actual quenches His own desire of stopping us from sinning, to allow us to sin and satan to help us sin more. The whole problem is with our fulfilling our objective. God is allowing and/or doing all He can to help us fulfill our objective (this at great cost to God and shows the selflessness of God.)
Satan does what God cannot do, but is limited by what God will allow him to do. God allows satan to hurt innocent people in order to provide opportunities for willing individuals to see, experience, share, give, receive and grow Godly type Love.
Satan does not “cause” us to sin but is a tempter, so we do decide to do some sin (sin is necessary). After we receive the indwelling Holy Spirit we have a Spiritual power to go up against demons.
1. Satan was an angel and we knew very little about how angels came into being, for instance: We know we will become like angels and cease to be humans, so were angles once like humans?
2. Earth is a place where we can both sin and receive forgiveness of sin, prior to becoming Spiritual beings dwelling in the Spiritual realm. Once we ascend to the spiritual realm will there be need for Faith and Hope? Does acceptance of forgiveness (Mercy/ LOVE) require faith and hope?
3. What more is God to do for satan that would cause him to accept God’s Love?
4. What makes you think satan has an organic brain (mind) that can think and learn anything?
5. Satan has been around for a long, long, time knowing for certain there is a Loving God, I see satan having a purpose and a reason for God holding back his finial punishment that does not include his potential salvation. Everything I read in scripture says it is to late for satan, where do you read satan can avoid hell?
From the Job story we get the following:
1. God brings up Job to satan to get satan interested.
2. God limits satan to what satan can do to Job.
3. God manipulates satan into attacking and hurting an innocent person, which God directly will not do.
4. Job at the end of the story is spiritually more mature than at the beginning, which could have been the intent of God from the beginning for it certainly would have been God’s desire.
5. Would it not also have been Job’s desire to know God better and grow spiritually and would that not have been in Job’s prays?
6. If God had come to Job without Job getting to the point he was in at the end of the story and said, “Job you think of Me to much in human terms, feel I do not know everything going on and could make errors.” The response from prior to all this happening would have been, “No Lord”, I do not feel that way at all.” Job would not be aware of his inner feelings toward God, that come out at the end of the story.
7. God does not do stuff for His own sake (that is not loving or unselfish), but God quenches His own desires to do everything for the sake of others including Job.
