Selling one's soul....

[Tolworth John]

A comment in another thread regarding the Holy Spirit living within us prompted me to share the following:

My nephew said something that I wish to explore. His statement:

I think people think the worst thing that can happen to them is to be poor. So many celebrities in the music industry have sold their souls to Satan its sickening.​

The first question that comes to mind is how does one sell their soul to Satan? How would you know if you had or had not? There is a popular speaker who goes around making the claim that this singer is a devil worshiper, or that person engages in satanic rituals to be famous, etc... Again, how would they know that? Is there something else at work here, and if so what would it be? Do we give "satan" too much credit and/or power?

Thoughts?

The idea is a hang over from the catholic state that was once europe/the world.
The idea was that 'everyone' was baptised a christian and that the devil was tryin g to get his claws on your soul.

The reality is that Jesus came to win people back from the devil. The 'natural' state is being a slave of the devil.
Christians have been forcible removed from the devils control and are now slaves of Jesus.

The devil uses the excesses of the successful superstars to keep the gulible single brain cell focused on material pleasure.
His real superstars are the sucessful middle of the road nonchristian or token christian well off.
They are showing that one can have the world without selling ones soul to anyone( not realising they are the devils property anyway. )

 

[Dave-W]

So , as you can see, there isn't any real need to sell your soul and it isn't even really possible. Once your a Christian GOD has your soul which he promises to NEVER let go off. So for that to even be feasible, it would mean Holy God didn't tell the truth which would unmake the universe and all creation

That works only if you believe the once saved always saved misunderstanding.

 

[Gary K]

There is actually a lot of Biblical evidence for the ability of a human being to sell their soul. And a lot more evidence that the plan of salvation devised by God was based upon buying us back.

This all revolves around the Hebrew concept of ga'al. This is a law, given by God to the Israelites, in which a person who comes onto hard times financially and has to sell his land, home, children, himself, etc... to pay his debts can be bought back out of the slavery he has sold himself and everything around him back out of it.

The book of Ruth is a practical application of this law. We see how it worked on a daily basis in that story. The law itself can found in Leviticus chapters 25 and 27. Where ever you find the word redeem in those two chapters the Hebrew word it is translated from is #1350 in Strong's Concordance, ga'al.

That Hebrew word can also be found translated as redeemer, and is the only Hebrew word found in the Old Testament to translated into redeemer. Every use of this word is used in relation to the Messiah that is to come to buy us back from which Adam and Eve sold us into, slavery to sin.

We see this theme continued in the NT by Luke, John, Peter, and Paul. Look up the words redeem and redeemed in the NT and everywhere you find it the underlying Greek word will mean ransomed, purchased, bought. Paul says of himself that he was sold under sin. So were we all.

That theme of selling oneself is also found in the OT. In 1Kings 21:20 Elijah tells Ahab that he has sold himself to work evil. In 2Kings 17:17 we are told that the northern kingdom of Israel sold themselves to do evil in the sight of God when they were worshiping Molech and passing their children through the fire.

This is a fascinating study. And as most people have both a Strong's concordance and a King James version Bible with Strong's concordance on their computer anyone can do this study for themselves. When I did this study myself it took me weeks to complete it for I also did the study Ellen White's writings and found many, many references to this concept in her writings. I made 50 megs of files by the time I had saved all the files I created saving the information I found.. And it took me a few weeks to complete working on this several hours a day. It's one of the most fascinating studies I have ever done on the plan of salvation. I highly recommend anyone interested in this subject to do the study themselves. If you don't accept Ellen White's writings do it strictly from the Bible. You will be amazed at what you find. I was anyway as I ended up with more than 200 texts related to this subject.

I've given only a very broad overview here of what you will find in doing this study. I found all the times ga'al is used doing attribute study for the related Strong's concordance number searches with my Bible software. There are also words used in the OT that are taken from the root word, ga'al. You will also find Hebrew words that mean ransomed in the OT that are translated as redeemed.

In no other Bible study have I found direct evidence that Jesus came to redeem not only us, but our inheritance, the earth, and our dominion over it for Satan stole that from Adam and Eve and he now has dominion over this earth. This study really expanded my understanding of our salvation and what all it means to us. It brought me to a clearer understanding of the goodness of God.