Why does God allow evil? Where did the devil come from?

According to the Bible, nothing can exist unless God gives it existence. “Through Him all things were made, and without Him nothing was made that was made.”(John 1:3). “Everything is from Him, By Him and to Him”(Rom. 11:36). “For by it we live and move and have our being”(Acts 17:28). In other parts of the Bible (primarily in the Psalms) this idea appears many times. However, God is not the creator of evil and does not support its existence. In this sense, evil does not exist. What we call evil does not exist in itself, but as a distortion of God’s plan, as a belittlement, degradation of what He created.

According to the Bible, the source of evil is the Devil. The Apostle John writes: “First the Devil sinned”(1 John 3:8). Having desired to be equal to God, he turned from a beautiful being (Lucifer, the Light-Bearer, see the books of the prophets Ezekiel 28:11-19, Isaiah 14:12-14) into an opponent of God (in Hebrew - Satan) and a liar (in Greek - Devil). The devil helped Adam and Eve also doubt God and want to determine for themselves what will be good and what will be evil (Genesis 3). "Only this I found that God created man upright, and people indulged in many thoughts"(Eccl. 7:29). In this desire to take the place of God, in the desire to separate from Him - the source of all good - is the cause of evil, i.e. inferiority of man and the world. Just as a flower withers and withers without the sun, so everything created by God cannot be good and kind without Him. One of the reasons for the degradation of our human nature is that each of us, in the person of Adam and Eve, abused our God-given freedom and turned away from our Creator. Just as unclean water flows from a dirty source, so we inherit a nature distorted by sin from our parents and pass it on to our children. But thanks to God, we have a desire for good and hatred for evil. And with the help of the Holy Spirit we must develop this desire for good and liberation from sin in ourselves. In the person of Jesus Christ, every person is already a winner in this fight against evil (Rom 5:12-19).

Questions arise: why does the all-powerful and all-good God allow evil? (More specific questions: Why did a beautiful and kind angel turn into the Devil? Why are the descendants of Adam and Eve born physically and spiritually sick, prone to evil?) This is one of the central problems raised in the Word of God. In theological and philosophical literature it is called theodicy (justification of God). But even when answering this question, the authors of the Holy Scriptures fall silent, as if calling us ourselves, through our own experience, to determine whether God is right! Based on the Bible, the problem of theodicy is solved approximately as follows. The all-powerful and all-good God allowed the existence of evil so that rational beings would be convinced who was right, Christ or Satan, and made a free, informed choice between life with God and life without Him (i.e. death). Freedom is not possible without alternatives. The Bible repeatedly speaks of two paths - the path of life and death, the narrow and the wide. And God calls on people to choose life.

If God explicitly punished manifestations of moral evil and suppressed manifestations of natural evil, then people would bow to Him Who is Truth, Life, Love out of fear of His punishment and the desire to receive protection from Him, and not because of sincere love to him. In this case, a person’s free, selfless acceptance of good would be difficult. (These conclusions can be drawn from the Book of Job.) And we would misunderstand God Himself, His character, and therefore we could not enter into a close relationship with Him, or live truly happily.

According to J. Young, "The Bible does not give us a theoretical answer to the question: 'Why does God allow suffering?' Instead, we find God there, suffering with us and atoning for our sin through the Crucifixion” (Young. J. Christianity. M., 1998. P. 44). Thus, the problem of evil in Christianity is solved, first of all, thanks to the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. To destroy sin and its consequences, but to have mercy on sinners, the Son of God becomes Man. The God-man lives a sinless life, showing the love of the Father to the whole world, but the innocent is sentenced to a shameful death. On the Cross, Christ takes the punishment intended by God for all the evil committed by people on Himself. Therefore, anyone who accepts His substitutionary sacrifice receives forgiveness from God and strength to forsake sin and prepare for eternal life.

The suffering of God shows how much He hates evil and how much He loves people. How God values man! How dear we are to Him! In order to communicate with us in eternity, He voluntarily went to the torment of the Cross. In the powerlessness of Christ on the Cross, the power and love of God are revealed. They find their manifestation in those who, following the example of Christ, fight evil in their lives and bring good to others.

Igor Muravyov

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Who is the Devil?

Who is the Devil and how do we know that such a spiritual person really exists? How did Satan the Devil come to be and how much influence does Satan the Devil have in the modern world?

Satan Devil

Definition. Spiritual creation, which is the main enemy of Jehovah God and all who worship the true God. This creation was named
Satan because it became the enemy of Jehovah God. Satan is also known as the Devil because he is the chief slanderer of God.

Satandescribed as an ancient serpent, apparently because in Eden he used the serpent to deceive Eve. And since then the word “snake” has been used todescriptions of an insidious, cunning person. In the book of Revelation, Satan is also symbolically represented as an insatiable dragon.

How do we know that such a spiritual person really exists?

Its existence is spoken of in the Bible. There this person is repeatedly called by name (52 times by Satan and 33 times by the Devil).

The Bible also records an eyewitness account that confirms that Satan exists. Who is this eyewitness? Jesus Christ, who before coming
lived on earth in heaven. When he was on earth, he spoke more than once about this evil person, calling him by name (Luke 22:31; 10:18; Matt. 25:41).

What the Bible says about Satan the Devil makes sense. The evil that humanity faces is immeasurably greater than the evil that
people are capable.

The Bible explains where Satan came from and how he operates.

This explanation helps to understand why, despite the desire of most people to live in peace, humanity has been torn apart by hatred, cruelty and war for thousands of years and why all this has reached such proportions that it threatens to destroy humanity.

If the Devil did not exist, then people would not need to listen to what the Bible says about him, because it would not bring them any tangible benefit. However, there is such a benefit.

Many of those who were formerly involved in the occult or were members of groups involved in spiritualism report that at that time they were greatly tormented because they heard “voices” coming from unseen sources, were “possessed” by superhuman beings, and the like.

When they learned what the Bible said about Satan and his demons, applied the Bible's advice to stop practicing spiritualism, and sought Jehovah God's help in prayer, they experienced real relief.

Believing in the existence of Satan does not mean imagining him as a creature with horns, a tail and a pitchfork who roasts people in a fiery hell.

There is no such description of Satan in the Bible. This is how medieval artists depicted Satan, who were influenced by the description of the mythological Greek god Pan and the first part of the “Divine Comedy” by the Italian poet Dante Alighieri, entitled “Hell.”

The Bible does not teach about a fiery hell. It clearly states that “the dead know nothing” (Eccl. 9:5).

Maybe Satan is just the evil in people?

Job 1:6-12 and 2:1-7 record that Jehovah God spoke to Satan. If Satan were simply evil within someone, then that evil would be in Jehovah. But this contradicts the Bible, which speaks of Jehovah as the one in whom “there is no unrighteousness” (Ps. 92:15; Rev. 4:8).

Interestingly, in the book of Job the Hebrew text uses the expression hasaʹtan (the word “Satan” with definite article).

This shows that we are talking about who is the main opponent of God.

Luke 4:1-13 says that the Devil tried to persuade Jesus to do his bidding.

This story contains the sayings of the Devil and the answers of Jesus. Was Jesus tempted by the evil within himself?

This view is inconsistent with the Bible's description of Jesus as a sinless man (Heb. 7:26; 1 Pet. 2:22).

Although John 6:70 uses the Greek word diʹbolos to describe Bad quality, which developed with Judas Iscariot, Luke 4:3 uses the expression ho diʹbolos (the word “Devil” with the definite article), which refers to a specific person.

By blaming the Devil for all troubles, aren't people simply trying to avoid responsibility for their deeds?

Some shift the blame for their actions to the Devil. However, the Bible shows that people are often largely to blame for the evil that others do to them or that their own behavior brings them (Eccl. 8:9; Gal. 6:7).

And yet the Bible does not leave us ignorant of the existence and tricks of the superhuman enemy who has brought so much grief to people.

The Bible shows how we can free ourselves from its influence.

How did Satan appear?

All the works of Jehovah God are perfect. No unrighteousness comes from him. He created no one evil (Deut. 32:4; Ps. 5:4).

Originally, the one who became Satan was the perfect spiritual son of God. By saying that the Devil “did not stand in the truth,” Jesus showed that he had once been
“in truth” (John 8:44).

Like all intelligent creatures of God, this spiritual son there was free will. But he abused his freedom of choice, allowing great conceit to develop in his heart, and passionately desired what only God has the right to - to be worshiped. He pushed Adam and Eve to obey him rather than God. So he made himself Satan, which means "adversary"

Why didn't God destroy Satan immediately after the rebellion?

Satan raised important questions.

1) The question of the justice and legitimacy of the sovereignty of Jehovah God.

Has Jehovah God deprived people of freedom that would promote their happiness?
Did people's ability to successfully manage their affairs and their future lives really depend on obedience to God?

Did Jehovah deceive the people when he gave them the law and told them that disobedience would lead to their death? (Gen. 2:16, 17; 3:3-5).

Did Jehovah God really have the right to rule?

2) The question of the integrity of rational creatures before Jehovah.

The rebellion of Adam and Eve raised the question: Do Jehovah God's servants truly obey him out of love, or will they all turn away from God and follow Satan?

This question received further development in the days of Job (Gen. 3:6; Job 1:8-11; 2:3-5; see also Luke 22:31).

Executing the rebels would not answer these questions.

God didn't have to prove anything to himself. But to ensure that these questions will never again threaten the peace and well-being of the universe, Jehovah God has provided sufficient time to provide comprehensive answers to them.

Time has shown that Adam and Eve's disobedience did lead to their death (Gen. 5:5).

But other questions were also raised. So God allowed Satan and men to try every form of government they could create. However, neither
one of them did not bring them lasting happiness. God allowed people to go to the limit in their desire to live without thinking about his righteous standards.

The consequences speak for themselves. The Bible correctly notes, “He who walks cannot direct his steps” (Jer. 10:23).

At the same time, God gave his servants the opportunity to prove their loyalty to him by obeying him out of love, despite the temptations and persecutions incited by Satan.

Jehovah God calls upon his servants: “Be wise, my son, and make my heart glad, that I may answer him that reproaches me.”—Prov. 27:11.

Those who remain faithful to Jehovah God are already reaping great blessings and will enjoy eternal life of perfection in the future.

They will live to do the will of Jehovah God—the one whose characteristics and ways they truly love.

How much influence does Satan have in the world today?

The world - humanity as a whole - submits to Satan, succumbing to his influence and neglecting the demands of God.

This is why Jesus Christ called Satan “the ruler of this world” (John 14:30; Eph. 2:2).

Satan is also called in the Bible “the god of this system of things,” and the people of this system honor him in their religious practices (2 Cor. 4:4; 1 Cor. 10:20).

Tempting Jesus Christ, the Devil “raised him to high place and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the inhabited earth.”

After this, the Devil said to him: “I will give you all the power over them and their glory, because this power has been given to me, and I give it to whomever I want.
Therefore, if you worship me, all this will be yours” (Luke 4:5-7).

Revelation 13:1, 2 shows that Satan gives “power, a throne, and great authority” to the world's political system.

Daniel 10:13, 20 shows that Satan has placed demonic princes over the major kingdoms of the earth.

In Ephesians 6:12 these princes are called the governments, the powers, the rulers of the world, the rulers of this darkness, the evil spiritual powers that are in the heavenly regions.

No wonder 1 John 5:19 says, “The whole world is in the power of the Evil One.”

However, Satan will only reign for a limited time as long as the Most High God, Jehovah, allows it.

How long will Satan be allowed to deceive people?

Getting rid of evil influence Satan is symbolically described as follows: “I saw an angel descending from heaven with the key to the abyss and a large chain in his hand. He seized the dragon, the ancient serpent who is the Devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years. He threw him into the abyss, closed it and sealed it over him so that he would no longer deceive the nations until the thousand years were completed. After this he must be released for a short time” (Rev. 20:1-3).

What then? “The devil who misled them was thrown into the lake of fire and brimstone” (Rev. 20:10).

What does it mean? The answer is found in Revelation 21:8: “This means the second death.” He will disappear forever!

Does Satan's imprisonment in the abyss mean that he will be placed in a desolate earth for 1000 years, where he will have no one to tempt?

As support for this view, some cite (Revelation 20:3). He cast him into the abyss, closed it, and sealed it over him, so that he would not deceive the nations any more until the thousand years were completed. After that, he was to be released for a short time time.)

They say that the "abyss" represents the desolate land. But is it?

Revelation 12:7-9, 12 shows that some time before Satan is imprisoned in the abyss, he is thrown from heaven to earth, where he causes much grief to people.

Therefore, when Revelation 20:3 says that Satan is cast into the abyss, it does not mean that he is simply left where he already is - in the invisible sphere limited to the outskirts of the earth. He is removed from there so that he “deceives the nations no more until the thousand are ended.”
years".

Notice that Revelation 20:3 says that after a thousand years Satan is to be delivered from the Abyss, not the nations. During the release of Satan, the people who formerly made up these nations will still live on earth.

Isaiah 24:1-6 and Jeremiah 4:23-29 are sometimes cited to support this view.

It says: “Jehovah God is desolating the earth and destroying it... […] The earth will be desolate and plundered, because this is the word that Jehovah God has spoken.”

“I looked at the earth, and behold, it was deserted and desolate… […] I looked, and behold, not a single person was around… […] Because Jehovah God says: “The whole earth will be desolate. […] All the cities are abandoned, and there is no man living in them."

What do these prophecies mean? The first time they were fulfilled was in Jerusalem and the land of Judah. Jehovah God carried out his judgment and allowed the Babylonians to take over the land. Over time, it fell into disrepair. (See Jeremiah 36:29.)

But God did not destroy the entire population of the earth then. He won't do it now either.

However, he will completely devastate both the modern equivalent of the unfaithful Jerusalem - the Christian world, which with its unclean behavior is a disgrace to the name of God, and all other parts of Satan's organization.

The earth will not be devastated. During the Millennial reign of Christ, when Satan is in the abyss, it will become a flourishing earthly paradise.

Life is the most wonderful gift

The name "Satan" comes from a Hebrew word meaning "to resist." In the early books of the Old Testament, written before the Babylonian captivity (i.e., before the 6th century BC), the word satan is used to mean “adversary.” In the episode telling about the journey of Balaam, the Angel of the Lord “stood ... on the road to hinder (satan) him” (Num. 22:22). Wherein the word satan did not necessarily refer to a supernatural adversary. Thus, the Philistines refused to accept David’s help, fearing that in the battle he would go over to the side of the enemy and become their satan, that is, their enemy (1 Sam. 29:4).

The word "Satan" in its more familiar sense appears in two later passages written after the Babylonian captivity. Here Satan is an angel belonging to Jehovah's entourage and acting as an accuser of sinners before God. In the Book of the Prophet Zechariah, approximately dating from the end of the 6th century BC. e., a vision is described in which the high priest Jesus appears before the court of God. At the right hand of Jesus stands Satan “to oppose him,” that is, to act as an accuser. This passage gives only a hint that Satan is overzealous in his task:

God rebukes him for trying to accuse a righteous man (Zech. 3:1-2).

In the first two chapters of the Book of Job, written about a hundred years later than the Book of the Prophet Zechariah, Satan is still the accuser of sinners, but here his malicious intent is already quite obvious.

It tells how the sons of God, including Satan, appear before Jehovah. Satan reports that he “walked the earth and walked around it,” and, according to the author of the book, these words should have sounded ominous: after all, Satan’s functions obviously included searching for unrighteous people. Jehovah then praises Job as a sinless and God-fearing man; Satan objects to this that it is not difficult for Job to fear God, for he is happy and rich. As a test, Jehovah allows Satan to kill Job's children and servants and destroy his livestock. However, despite all these disasters, Job refuses to curse God, philosophically declaring: "The Lord gave, the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord!" But Satan, not content with this, insidiously advises Jehovah: “...skin for skin, and for his life a man will give everything that he has; but stretch out Your hand and touch his bone and flesh, will he bless You?” Jehovah allows Satan to infect Job with leprosy, but Job remains faithful to the Lord.

William Blake. Satan showers Job with troubles

In this episode, Satan shows a strong determination to undermine Job's faith in God and acts as the direct executor of the punishments that befall Job. However, it acts in full accordance with God's instructions and appears to perform a useful function. He seeks to reveal the sinfulness inherent in every person by nature. But later, apparently, because of such fierce zeal, Satan became no less disgusted with God than with people. In the 1st Book of Enoch, which was not included in the Old Testament, but influenced the early Christians, a whole category appears - Satans, who are not allowed into heaven at all. Enoch hears the voice of the archangel Phanuel, "driving away the satans and forbidding them to appear before the Lord and accuse the inhabitants of the earth." In the same book, “punishing angels” appear, apparently identical to Satan. Enoch sees them preparing instruments for the execution of "the kings and rulers of this land, to destroy them."

From this idea of an inexorable angel accusing and punishing people, medieval and modern Christian image Devil. When the Old Testament was first translated into Greek, the word "satan" was rendered as "diabolos" - "accuser", with a connotation of the meaning of "false accuser", "slanderer", "slanderer"; From this word the name “Devil” arose.

Later Jewish authors tended to distinguish between good and evil principles and presented Jehovah as an absolutely good God. The actions of Jehovah in some biblical episodes seemed completely incredible to them, and therefore were attributed to some evil angel. The first version of the story of how David numbered the people of Israel and thereby brought God's punishment upon the Israelites is contained in the 2nd Book of Samuel (24:1), which dates back to the beginning of the 8th century BC. e. Here the idea of conducting a census is suggested to David by Jehovah himself. But retelling the same episode in the 1st Book of Chronicles, the author of the 4th century BC. e. shifts responsibility for this act from God to Satan:

“And Satan rose up against Israel, and stirred up David to number the Israelites” (1 Chron. 21:1). This is the only instance in the original text of the Old Testament of the use of the word "Satan" as a proper name.

In even later Jewish texts and in Christian teaching, the image of Satan becomes increasingly clear. Satan is gradually gaining strength, turning into a great adversary of God and man and almost (but not completely) leaving the power of the Lord. Many have wondered why Satan, initially a helpful but rather unpleasant servant of Jehovah, eventually falls from God's favor and becomes His enemy. One of the possible answers to this question is given by the legend about the so-called Guardians, the grain of which is contained in the Book of Genesis. When the human race multiplied on earth, “the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were beautiful, and they took them as wives as they chose.” In those days, “there were giants on earth,” and the children that human daughters bore from angels were “strong people, glorious people of old.” Perhaps this fragment merely served to explain the legends about ancient giants and heroes; however, wittingly or unwittingly, the next verse connected it with the reign of evil on earth: “And the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually.” That is why God decided to cause a great flood and destroy humanity (Gen. 6:1-5).

Several allusions to this story can be found in other books of the Old Testament, but the first complete (albeit later) version appears only in 1 Enoch, in fragments apparently dating back to the 2nd century BC. h. “And it came to pass that when the human race multiplied, beautiful and beautiful daughters began to be born to men in those days. And the angels, the sons of heaven, saw them and desired them, and said to each other: Let us go, let us choose wives for ourselves among the daughters of men, and let them bear children for us." These angels belonged to the rank of Guardians who do not know sleep. Their leader was either Semjaza or, according to other fragments, Azazel. Two hundred Guardians descended to earth - to Mount Hermon. There they took wives for themselves “and began to go in to them and indulge in filth with them.” They taught their wives witchcraft and magic, and also passed on to them knowledge about the healing properties of plants. Azazel taught men to make weapons - swords, knives, shields. In addition, he introduced people to the vicious art of cosmetics.

Mortal women began to give birth to children from the Guardians - powerful giants who, over time, ate all the food supplies. “And when people could no longer feed them, the giants turned against them and devoured humanity, and they began to indulge in sin with birds and beasts, reptiles and fish, and devour each other’s flesh and drink blood.”

Then God sent the archangel Raphael to imprison Azazel in the desert until the Day of the Last Judgment, at which he would be condemned to eternal fire.

The remaining Guardians were forced to watch as the angels killed their children. Then God ordered the Archangel Michael to chain the Guardians and imprison them in the gorges of the earth until the day when they would be cast into the fiery abyss to eternal torment. Demons emerged from the bodies of dead giants and settled on the earth, where they still live, spreading evil and destruction everywhere.

One passage sympathetically suggests that the sin committed by the angels was explained not so much by lust as by a thirst for family comfort, which, unlike people, the celestials were deprived of. This is the first hint of the later legend about the envy that some angels began to feel towards man. God tells the angels that they are not given wives and children, since they are immortal and do not need procreation. But in later eras the prevailing idea was that evil, bloodshed and forbidden arts appeared on earth due to the fact that a monstrous crime was committed against the laws of Nature. The carnal union of the angelic, divine principle with the mortal, human, gave birth to monsters - giants. It is possible that, on the basis of the legend of the Guardians, medieval beliefs about sexual relations between witches and the Devil arose. And, in essence, this whole legend turns out to be a kind of devilish parody of the main mystery of the Christian faith - the mystery of the descent of God to a mortal woman and the birth of the Savior.

Some church fathers, including Augustine the Blessed, rejected the legend of the Guardians and linked the origin of evil with the rebellion of the supreme archangel, who rebelled against God, overcome by pride.

They found confirmation of this version in the famous fragment from the Book of the Prophet Isaiah, which in fact is a prophecy about the deplorable fate of the king of Babylon:

Lucifer is the star of the Dawn.

“How you fell from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the dawn! You who trampled on the nations were broken on the ground. And you said in your heart: I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God, and I will sit on the mountain in the assembly of gods, on the edge of the north; and I will ascend to the heights cloudy, I will be like the Most High. But you are cast down into hell, into the depths of the pit" (Is. 14:12-15).

This is how the Christian legend was born about the Devil’s attempt to become equal to God himself and about the expulsion of the rebel from heaven. This version of the answer to the question of why the early biblical Satan-accuser fell from Jehovah's favor turned out to be especially successful, since it was consistent with the tendency of later Jewish and Christian authors to elevate the original status of Satan almost to the position of an independent deity. At the same time, it was argued that before the fall the rebellious archangel bore the name Dennitsa, and after the fall he began to be called Satan.

The quoted fragment from the Book of the Prophet Isaiah is possibly associated with the legend of the beautiful one who lived in Eden morning star, dressed in sparkling gems and bright light. Overcome with insane pride, he dared to challenge God himself. “Daystar, son of the dawn” in the original Hebrew sounded like Helel ben Shahar, i.e. “day star, son of the dawn.”

Ancient Jews, Arabs, Greeks and Romans identified the morning star (planet Venus) with a male deity. In Greek it was called "phosphoros" (Phosphoros), and in Latin - "lucifer" (Lucifer); both of these names mean "light bearer." It has been hypothesized that the legend of Lucifer is based on the fact that the morning star is the last of the stars visible at dawn. She seems to challenge the rising sun, which is why the legend arose about the rebellious morning star and the punishment that befell him.

The legends of Lucifer and the Guardians connect the origin of evil with the fall of the celestials, who succumbed to the sin of pride or lust and were condemned to punishment in hell. These two legends naturally came together:

The Guardians began to be considered Lucifer's minions. Hints of such an interpretation are already contained in the 1st Book of Enoch. One of its fragments says that the Guardians were seduced by Satan, who led them astray from the true path and led them to the path of sin; Elsewhere, Azazel, the leader of the apostate angels, is described as “a star that fell from heaven.” By the 1st century AD. e. Lucifer, Satan and the Guardians were united in a single tradition, to which was added the story of Eden. The 2nd Book of Enoch says that the archangel Satanael tried to become like God and tempted the Guardians to rise up with him. They were all expelled from heaven, and Satanael, wanting to take revenge on God, tempted Eve in Eden. According to the apocryphal text “The Life of Adam and Eve” (“Vita Adae et Evae”), Satan was expelled from the host of angels because he disobeyed God and did not want to worship Adam. Michael told him that God would be angry with him for this, but Satan replied: “If he becomes angry with me, then I will set my throne above the stars of heaven and will be like the Most High.” Upon learning of this, God cast Satan and his followers to earth, and Satan seduced Eve in revenge. Here the idea of the sin of pride that overwhelmed the Devil is combined with the legend of the envy of angels towards man.

There is not a single hint in the Book of Genesis that the serpent who tempted Eve was the Devil; however, Christian authors generally claim that it was either a messenger from the Devil or the Devil himself in guise. On this basis, Saint Paul developed the fundamental Christian dogma, which consists in the fact that the Fall of Adam betrayed all subsequent generations of people into the power of the Devil and doomed them to sins and; but then God sent His Son to earth to free people from this punishment. If Adam, having disobeyed God, made people mortal, then Christ, having voluntarily accepted, gave people eternal life: “As in Adam all die, so in Christ all will live” (1 Cor. 15:22).

Jesus and his disciples apparently believed that The devil has power over this world- or, at least, above worldly vanity, luxury and pride. The Gospel of Matthew tells how the Devil, tempting Christ in the desert, showed Him “all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them” and uttered the words that then formed the basis of Satanism: “... all this I will give you if you fall and worship me " (Matt. 4:8-9). In a parallel episode in the Gospel of Luke, the Devil specifically stipulates that he has been given authority over all the kingdoms of this world:

“I will give you the power over all these kingdoms and the glory of them, for it has been given to me, and I give it to whomever I want” (Luke 4:6). Jesus calls the Devil “the prince of this world” (John 12:31, 14:30, 16:11), and St. Paul calls him “the god of this world” (2 Cor. 4:4). The Gnostics later interpreted these fragments in their own way: they argued that the Devil rules this world because it was he who created it, while God is alien to man and far from what is happening on earth.

Another later trend in the formation of the image of the Devil was to identify him with Leviathan - the monstrous primordial dragon or serpent who once challenged Jehovah to battle. Isaiah says that God will smite “the leviathan that runs straight, and the leviathan that bends” (Isaiah 27:1). It is possible that the legend of Jehovah’s victory over Leviathan is associated with Babylonian and Canaanite myths. In Babylon, the victory of the god Marduk over the great Tiamat, who tried to overthrow the gods and take their place, was celebrated annually. In Canaanite myth, Baal slays the sea dragon Lophan (Itn), or Leviathan:

“When you struck Leviathan, the slippery one, (And) put an end to the writhing, seven-headed Tyrant...”*.

In the Revelation of John, Leviathan and the Devil - opponents of God, overcome by pride and deserving of severe punishment - are identified with each other. A huge dragon with seven heads appears. Its tail pulls a third of the stars from the sky and casts them to the ground. “And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought against them, but they did not stand, and there was no longer a place for them in heaven. And the great dragon was cast out, the ancient serpent, called the devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world, was cast out to the earth, and his angels were cast out with him." Then a triumphant voice is heard from heaven: “... the slanderer of our brethren is cast down, who slandered them before our God day and night.” And this voice proclaims woe to those living on earth, “for the devil has come down to you in great wrath, knowing that he has not much time left” (Rev. 12:3-12).
This grandiose vision combines almost all the main motifs of the later Christian concept of the Devil: “Satan” accusing people before God; war in heaven, in which the Lord's army is led by the Archangel Michael; the overthrow of Dennitsa-Lucifer from heaven; fallen angels (fallen stars) are his minions; seven-headed dragon Leviathan; and, finally, the belief that the vengeful wrath of the Devil has fallen upon the earth. It is not entirely clear whether the description of the Devil as a “seducer” referred to the episode of the Serpent of Eden, but many generations of Christians who read this fragment of the Book of Revelation almost certainly identified the “ancient serpent” with the tempter of Eve.

It was the Christians who exalted the Devil, almost equalizing him in rights with God.

Convinced of the impeccable goodness of God, they nevertheless felt the frightening proximity of the great supernatural Enemy, the quintessence of all the world's evil. Catholics began to explain the fall of the Devil as a sin of pride; this version became orthodox and remains so to this day.

In the Middle Ages and at the dawn of modern times, the Devil remained frighteningly real and close to almost every Christian. He appeared in folk tales, theatrical productions and Christmas pantomimes; priests remembered him every now and then in their sermons; he watched the parishioners with an ominous gaze from church frescoes and stained glass windows. And his minions were everywhere - invisible to mere mortals, omniscient, evil and treacherous.

Evil is attractive in its own way, and the more power the Devil was endowed with in people’s imaginations, the more attractive this image became.

The devil, like God, was usually depicted in the guise of a man, and Christians believed in the rebellion of the supreme archangel against God not least because this legend touched on certain hidden strings of the human heart. Lucifer was perceived as a rebellious man, and pride, oddly enough, seemed to be a more worthy reason for the fall of the angels than the lust that overwhelmed the Guardians. As a result, the image of the Devil acquired romantic traits. IN " Paradise Lost"In Milton, this greatest of rebels appears as a fearless, strong-willed, decisive rebel who did not want to bow to his superior strength and did not humble himself even after defeat. Such a powerful image inevitably inspired admiration. Considering how magnificent and grandiose the devil’s pride and power were, it is not surprising that In some people, a desire was awakened to worship the Devil, and not God.

People who worship the Devil do not consider him evil. That supernatural creature, which in Christianity acts as the Enemy, for a Satanist is a kind and merciful god. However, the word “good” in relation to the Devil in the mouths of his adherents differs in meaning from the traditional Christian understanding. From the point of view of a Satanist, what Christians consider good is actually evil, and vice versa. True, the Satanist’s attitude towards good and evil turns out to be ambivalent: for example, he experiences perverted pleasure from the knowledge that he is doing evil, but at the same time he is convinced that his actions are actually righteous.

Devil Worship good god naturally entails the belief that the Christian God the Father, the Old Testament Lord, was and remains an evil God, hostile to man, trampling truth and morality. In developed forms of Satanic cult, Jesus Christ is also condemned as an evil entity, although in the past sects accused of devil worship did not always share this opinion.

Claiming that God the Father and God the Son, the creators of Jewish and Christian morality, are in fact the bearers of evil, Satanists, of course, come to deny the entire Judeo-Christian moral law and the rules of behavior based on it. Devotees of the devil are highly concerned with sense gratification and worldly success. They strive for power and self-affirmation, satisfaction of carnal desires and sensual passions, violence and cruelty. Christian piety with its virtues of self-denial, humility, spiritual purity and integrity seems to them lifeless, faded and sluggish. They are ready to repeat with all their hearts after Swinburne: “You have conquered, O pale Galilean, and the world has lost its colors from your breath.”

In Satanism, as in all forms of magic, any acts traditionally condemned as evil are highly valued for their special psychological and mystical effects. According to devil worshipers, it is possible to achieve perfection and divine bliss, for example, through the ecstasy into which participants in a sexual orgy (often including perverted forms of sex, homosexuality, masochism, and sometimes cannibalism) bring themselves. Because the Christian church(especially the Roman Catholic) is perceived as a disgusting sect of adherents of an evil deity, then its rituals should be parodied and profaned. Thus, Satanists not only express their devotion to the Devil, but also transfer to Satan the power that is contained in Christian rituals.

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"Who is the devil?", - our attitude to this issue directly affects our lives!

Post content:
- First, an introduction,
- then briefly stated theses,
- then detailed explanation with links to sources.

Introduction

inscription entitled:
"Funny as hell"

I constantly see how modern television accustoms us to the fact that the devil is a kind of semi-comical character who wants to take over human soul, but a person always defeats him quite easily(as, for example, in the film "Constantine" or "Blinded by Desires"). Or the devil, like the tooth fairy, does not exist.

BUT the devil is real and he wants us not to take him seriously so that they resist his tricks less.

Theses

Devil (Satan)- a fallen angel whom God cast down from heaven because he, being proud, wanted to take the place of God.

The devil is not equal to God within my means. God allows Satan to remain on earth until the day of judgment, when he will be condemned to eternal punishment along with those who took his side. (these are other fallen angels and people who were not reconciled with God during their earthly life). The outcome is predetermined by the prophecy of the Bible.

IN this moment the devil tries to harm people so that as a result they will also be at enmity with God. The devil cannot do more than he is allowed by God.

Detailed explanation with links to sources

The devil is the creature he tells us about , therefore, to figure out who he is, we will explore this issue in .

1. In the Old Testament of the Bible "devil" is called"Satan" which means "enemy" (enemy of God and His people).

Here are some Bible passages that support this:

"AND Satan rose up against Israel and provoked David to do numbering of Israel" (Bible, 1 Chronicles 21:1) /God did not want David to do this./

Another book of the Bible says: " And he showed me Jesus, the great priest, standing before the Angel of the Lord, and Satan standing at his right hand, to counteract him. And the Lord said to Satan: May the Lord rebuke you, Satan; may the Lord, who has chosen Jerusalem, rebuke you! is he not a brand plucked from the fire?" (Bible, book of the prophet Zechariah 3:1,2) /We see that God can rebuke Satan/.

Satan (devil) is a fallen angel who became proud, wanting to be the same as God, for which he was cast out of heaven:

"Your pride with all your noise has been cast into the pit; The worm lies beneath you, and the worms are your covering. How you fell from the sky, Lucifer, son of the dawn! crashed to the ground, trampling the nations. And he said in his heart: “I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God, and I will sit on the mountain in the assembly of gods, on the edge of the north; I will ascend to the heights of the clouds, I will be like the Most High.” "." (Bible, book of the prophet Isaiah 14:11-14)

Jesus in the new testament explains that this is specifically about Satan: " He told them: I saw Satan fall from heaven like lightning " (Bible, Luke 10:18).

And in Revelation it is repeated: "And the great dragon was cast out, the ancient serpent, called the devil and Satan. He who deceives the whole world is cast out to the earth, and his angels are thrown out with him" (Bible, Revelation 12:9)

The devil is also called "Apollyon", which means "destroyer":
"She had a king over her angel of the abyss; His name in Hebrew is Abaddon, and in Greek Apollyon" (Bible, book of Revelation 9:11).

2. Who hasn’t seen a movie or cartoon where the devil is shown as the ruler of hell, BUT the Bible says that he is “the prince of this world” and “the god of this world” (we are talking about the current world of living people) /personally, I wondered: How is it that the devil is shown everywhere as the ruler of hell, but the Bible, which is the primary source, says something completely different?” What can you say?)) People often practice wishful thinking. /:

"Now is the judgment of this world; now the prince of this world will be cast out"(Bible, Gospel of John 12:31),"It is not long now for me to speak with you; for it is coming prince of this world and has nothing in Me"(Bible, Gospel of John 14:30),"about the trial, what the prince of this world is condemned" (Bible, Gospel of John 16:11),

"for the unbelievers who have the god of this age has blinded the minds lest the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of the invisible God, should shine upon them."(Bible, 2 Corinthians 4:4),"in which you once lived, according to the custom of this world, according to the will the prince of the power of the air, the spirit now at work in the sons of disobedience" (Bible, Ephesians 2:2)“We know that we are from God and that the whole world lies in evil.”(Bible, 1 John 5:19).

If you compare it with any movie, I would compare it with The Matrix. It would make Agent Smith look like the devil. Smith tried to capture every person, but he was stopped just as the devil would be stopped.

3. When I read in the Bible that the devil is the father of lies, everything fell into place! He always wants to deceive everyone, and the biggest deception he propagates is: “At the end of life, we will not give God an account for our life. After death there will be a second chance. Those who are with the devil will be with him in his kingdom - in hell , where it is supposedly even better than in paradise, the devil does not exist, like everything spiritual.” BUT this is a lie! In reality, everyone at the end of their earthly life will give an account to God for their life, they will be judged and no one will have a second chance! The devil is real and will be punished along with his followers!

Jesus says to people who don't believe in Him: “Your father is the devil, and you want to do the lusts of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning and did not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks his own way, because he is a liar and the father of lies” (Bible, Gospel of John 8:44).

I take comfort in the fact that the Bible is a prophetic book, and it predicts the fate of the devil: “The devil, who deceived them, was thrown into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are, and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever” (Bible, book of Revelation 20:10).

4. Knowing everything that is written, I have no illusions about the devil. The Bible shows us the devil as a cruel, deceitful adversary who seeks to destroy all that is good by opposing God. BUT to think that he is stupid and assertive, like a barbarian, is a delusion, because, as the father of all liars and swindlers, the devil is sophisticated in the art of deception and can take the form of an angel of light, passing off evil as good,

Devil(from Church Slavonic devil, ancient Greek διάβολος - “ slanderer”) – one of the angels who fell away from God, even before God created the visible world. Subsequently - one of the names of the head of the dark forces.

The devil is a creature that God created good, kind, and light-bearing (the Greek word “Eosphoros” and the Latin “Lucifer” mean “light-bringer”). As a result of resistance to God, the divine will and divine Providence, the light-bearer fell away from God. Since the fall of the light-bearer and some of the angels from God, evil has appeared in the world. It was not created by God, but was introduced by the free will of the devil and demons.

At the dawn of created existence, even before God created the visible world, but after the creation of angels in spiritual world a huge catastrophe occurred, which we know about only from its consequences. Some of the angels, having resisted God, fell away from Him and became hostile to everything that is good and holy. At the head of this fallen army stood Eosphorus, or Lucifer, whose very name (lit. “luminiferous”) shows that initially he was good, but then of his own free will “and by autocratic will he changed from the natural to the unnatural, and became proud against the one who created him.” God, wanted to resist Him, and the first, falling away from good, found himself in evil” (John of Damascus). Lucifer, who is also called the devil and Satan, belonged to one of the highest ranks of the angelic hierarchy. Together with him, other angels also fell away, which is allegorically narrated in the Apocalypse: “...And a great star fell from heaven, burning like a lamp... and... a third part of the stars was struck, so that a third part of them was eclipsed” (Apoc. 8:10, 12).

The devil and demons found themselves in darkness by their own free will. Every rational living being, be it an angel or a human, is endowed by God with free will, that is, the right to choose between good and evil. Free will is given to a living being so that, by practicing good, it can ontologically participate in this good, that is, so that good does not remain only something given from the outside, but becomes its own property. If good were imposed by God as a necessity and inevitability, not a single living creature could become a full-fledged free person. “No one ever became good under compulsion,” say the Holy Fathers. Through constant growth in goodness, the angels had to ascend to the fullness of perfection up to complete likeness to the super-good God. Some of them, however, made a choice not in favor of God, thereby predetermining both their fate and the fate of the Universe, which from that moment turned into an arena of confrontation between two polar (albeit unequal) principles: good, Divine and evil, demonic .

Demons do not know a person’s thoughts, but they certainly know the thoughts that they themselves inspired in that person. Again, they cannot know whether we accepted these thoughts or not, but they guess this from our actions. As for thoughts from God or some natural ones, they can guess about them from our behavior, but they cannot know them exactly.

Inside human soul a demon (or demon) cannot enter; only the Lord can penetrate there by supernatural Divine action. A demon can only live in a person’s body, taking possession to one degree or another of his mental or physical manifestations, i.e. either a possessed person occasionally experiences seizures, or completely loses control of himself.

A demon can enter a person’s body under the influence of witchcraft - unless, of course, the person resorts to God’s help, does not confess, receive communion, or pray. Or maybe there is some kind of permission from God, for admonition.

The only thing the devil is capable of is to give a person some sinful thought, for example, the thought of suicide. And he does this not because it is open to him inner world a person, his heart, but only focusing on external signs. Having instilled some thoughts in a person, the devil is not able to control what will happen to them next. And if a person knows how to distinguish which thought came from God, which from his own human nature, and which from the devil, and reject sinful thoughts at their very appearance, the devil will not be able to do anything. The devil becomes stronger as a sinful or passionate thought penetrates the human mind.

The Revelation of St. John the Theologian says: the final victory of Christ over the Antichrist, good over evil, God over the devil, will be won. In the Liturgy of Basil the Great, we hear that Christ descended into hell by the Cross in order to destroy the kingdom of the devil and bring all people to God, that is, with His presence and thanks to His death on the cross, He permeated with Himself everything that we subjectively perceive as the kingdom of the devil. And in the stichera dedicated to the Cross of Christ, we hear: “Lord, You have given us Your Cross as a weapon against the devil”; It also says that the Cross is “the glory of angels and the plague of demons,” this is an instrument before which demons tremble, and the devil “trembles and shakes.”

How the devil works

The devil persuaded man to himself through lies, deceived man, the forefathers accepted lies under the guise of truth. “Since that time, our nature, infected with the poison of evil, strives voluntarily and involuntarily towards evil, which appears to be good and pleasure to a distorted will, a perverted mind, a perverted feeling of the heart. Arbitrarily: because we still have a remnant of freedom in choosing good and evil. Involuntarily: because this remnant of freedom does not act as complete freedom; he operates under the inherent influence of the corruption of sin. We are born this way; we cannot help but be like this: and therefore all of us, without any exception, are in a state of self-delusion and demonic delusion.” The return of a person to God is extremely difficult, almost impossible, impossible from one’s own strength, due to the blocking of the path to Truth by “countless seductive false images of Truth.” The devil dresses up the demands of our passions in appearances, uses the harmful attractions of our fallen nature to keep us in his networks. One of the types of seduction, according to St. Ignatius, is that we consider ourselves eternal on this earth. We have a sense of immortality implanted in us from God, but we do not see that, due to the fall, we are stricken with death and immortal soul and our body, we forget about the hour of death and the upcoming judgment.
However, the worst thing is that, due to the blindness with which we are born, we are happy with our condition, we are careless, we admire our blindness. “Despite my terrible sinfulness, I rarely see my sinfulness. Despite the fact that in me good is mixed with evil, and has become evil, just as fine food mixed with poison becomes poison, I forget the plight of the good that was given to me at creation, damaged, distorted during the fall. I begin to see my goodness in myself as whole, immaculate and to admire it: my vanity takes me from the fruitful and fat pasture of repentance to a distant country! to a rocky and barren land, to a land of thorns and weeds, to a land of lies, self-deception, and destruction.”
The sacrament of Baptism that we have accepted, according to St. Ignatius, of course, restores our communication with God, returns freedom, again bestows spiritual strength, and hence the Holy Spirit is co-present with a person throughout his entire life. We receive even more than the first-created man had in his immaculate state: in Baptism we put on the image of the God-man. But, along with the received power to reject passions, the freedom to submit to them again was also left, just as “in the sensual paradise it was left to the discretion of the first-created man either to obey the commandment of God or to disobey it.” Moreover, Baptism did not destroy the ability of fallen nature to give birth to evil mixed with good in order to test and strengthen our will in choosing the good of God. “At baptism,” says St. Ignatius, - Satan, who lives in every person of fallen nature, is expelled from man; It is left to the will of a baptized person to either remain the temple of God and be free from Satan, or remove God from himself and again become the dwelling place of Satan.” St. Ignatius compares the effect of Baptism to the grafting of a branch from a noble apple tree onto a wild apple tree. Branches should no longer be allowed to be born from the trunk of a wild apple tree; they should be born from a noble apple tree. Referring to St. Isaac the Syrian (Sl. 1, 84), St. Mark of the Ascetic (Sermon on Baptism), Xanthopoulov (chap. 4, 5, 7), St. Ignatius says that in Baptism Christ is planted in our hearts, like a seed in the ground, this gift in itself is perfect, but we either develop it or suppress it with our lives. The state of renewal received in Baptism “needs to be maintained by living according to the Gospel commandments.” It is necessary to prove your fidelity to Christ by preserving and increasing the gift received from Him. But, St. Ignatius quotes the words of St. John Chrysostom that we preserve the glory of Baptism for only one or two days, and then we extinguish it with the storm of worldly cares. Spiritual treasure is not taken away, but is hidden under the cover of our darkness; Christ remains in us even then, only we, by reviving our old man, have robbed Him of the opportunity to accomplish our salvation. “By doing evil after baptism, bringing activity to fallen nature, reviving it, a person loses more or less spiritual freedom: sin again gains violent power over a person; the devil again enters into man and becomes his ruler and leader.” Only, St. repeatedly notes. Ignatius, “the power of sin creeps into us unnoticed: unnoticed we lose spiritual freedom,” we do not see our captivity, we do not see our blindness precisely because of blindness. “Our state of captivity and slavery is revealed to us only when we begin to fulfill the Gospel commandments: then our mind rebels with bitterness against the mind of Christ, and our heart looks wildly and hostilely at the fulfillment of the will of Christ, as if at its own death and murder ; Then we will experience the sad loss of freedom, our terrible fall.”
But what was lost returns again in the sacrament of Repentance, “one who was born and then died can come to life through repentance.” Having entered into the struggle with sin within ourselves, in this subtlest invisible warfare with which mental activity is filled, having begun the work of repentance, which is “the consequence and effect of the grace implanted by Baptism,” we will again achieve revival for us, the active discovery of this mysterious thing given to us in baptism the gift of God’s grace, which consists “in the union of human nature with God’s nature and in the healing of the former by touching the latter.” And “if only God can change nature, then the consciousness of the damage caused in nature original sin, and humble prayer for healing and renewal of nature by its Creator, is the strongest, most effective weapon in the fight against nature.” Whoever has felt the poverty of fallen nature, has really, with his very life realized the need for communion with Christ, he no longer hopes in himself, not in his blindness, not in his fallen strength, but only in Christ, for help from above, he rejects his own will, everything He sacrifices himself to God, strives for Him with all his mind, heart, and all his being, which is what fulfills the constant feat of mental activity.

Demons, demons

Demon- translation of the Greek word demon, which in Homer, Hesiod and others means something between gods and people, and in Plato it means the souls of dead good people. According to the beliefs of the ancients, such souls became patronizing geniuses who influenced personal well-being. Socrates often speaks of his “demon.” Among the Seventy, this word is used to reproduce the Hebrew words “gods” (Ps. 94:3), “devils” - shedim (Deut. 32:17), “infection” (Ps. 90:6 - “midday demon” - “ infection that devastates at noon"), etc. In Josephus it is always used of evil spirits. Demons, by his definition, are the souls of wicked people (“Jude. War”, VII, 6, 3). In the New Testament this term is used several times in general in the sense of pagan gods or idols (Acts 17:18; 1 Cor. 10:20), but usually about evil spirits or devils who, although they believe and tremble (James 2:19 ), recognize Jesus as the Son of God (Matthew 8:29), but are the servants of their prince - Beelzebub - Satan (Matthew 12:24). See below. Beelzebub, Devil, Satan.

Source: Orthodox Theological Encyclopedia

Evil forces in the Old Testament

There is evidence of the presence of demonic creatures in the world already in the book. Genesis, which describes the temptation of the first people by the serpent. However, ideas about evil forces are formed over a long period of time, including some elements borrowed from folk beliefs. When describing the actions of dark forces, “folklore is also used, which populates ruins and desert areas with a variety of vague presences, interspersed with wild animals: these are hairy satyrs (Is 13.21; 34.13 LXX), Lilith, the female demon of the nights (34.14 )… They are assigned cursed places, like Babylon (13) or the land of Edom (34). The rite of purification prescribes that a goat, on whom the sins of Israel are laid, should be handed over to the demon Azazel (Lev 16.10)” (Brunon J.-B., Grelot P. Demons // Leon-Dufour. Dictionary of Biblical Theology. Stb. 45). The development of Old Testament demonology, apparently, is indicated by the different readings of 1 Chronicles 21.1: “And Satan rose up against Israel, and stirred up David to number the Israelites,” where the author of the book attributes to Satan what is in the text of 2 Samuel 24.1: “ The wrath of the Lord again kindled against the Israelites, and it aroused David in them to say: “Go, number Israel and Judah” - is made dependent on the wrath of the Lord. This comparison of texts shows the direction in which Old Testament theological thought is developing in understanding the actions of malevolent forces. Initially, this thought tries to avoid an open opposition between the world of good (God) and the world of evil (Satan), so as not to give rise to dualism, to which the Israeli people were pushed by their pagan environment. Therefore, in some cases, Satan is depicted appearing before the Lord along with other angels, called “sons of God” in the Book of Job (Job 1.6); in others, his initial fall and self-deification are described using the image of the king of Tire: “Son of man! Weep for the king of Tire and tell him: Thus says the Lord God: you are the seal of perfection, the fullness of wisdom and the crown of beauty. You were in Eden, in the garden of God... you were an anointed cherub... you were perfect in your ways from the day you were created, until iniquity was found in you... you sinned, and I cast you down as unclean from the mountain of God, drove you out... Because of your beauty your heart was lifted up, because of your vanity you destroyed your wisdom; therefore I will cast you to the ground, I will put you in shame before kings” (Ezek 28:12-17). The repeated mention of evil forces in the Old Testament texts is also found in connection with the frequent temptation to appease demons with the help of magical rites and spells. In this case, evil forces actually turned into gods, since they were worshiped and sacrifices were made. For the Israelites these were “new” gods, “which they did not know” and “which came from their neighbors” (i.e., the pagans); The Bible directly calls such gods demons (Deut. 32.17). God sometimes allowed this temptation for the Israelites to test their love and loyalty to Him (Deut. 13:3). However, Israel often betrayed God by offering “sacrifices to demons” (Deut. 32:17). At the same time, betrayal sometimes turned into a monstrous crime, for “the Israelites sacrificed their sons and daughters as a sacrifice to demons” (Ps 105. 37-38). They also resorted to the help of dark forces in those cases when, following the example of the pagans, they engaged in divination, conspiracies, and sorcery. In 1 Samuel 28.3-25, the case of the Endor sorceress, who at the request of Saul summoned the spirit of the prophet, is described in detail. Samuel. The wicked queen Jezebel also practiced sorcery (2 Kings 9.22). King Manasseh “and told fortunes, and cast spells, and brought in callers of the dead and magicians” (2 Kings 21.6). Ahaziah “sent envoys to inquire of Beelzebub, the deity of Ekron” (2 Kings 1.2, 3, 16). All of these are “abominations” (Deut. 18:12), from which God warns His people: “There shall not be among you a soothsayer, a fortune-teller, a soothsayer, a sorcerer, a charmer, a conjurer of spirits, a magician, or one who inquires of the dead” (Deut. 18.12). 10-11). All these servants of demonic forces only build illusions of their power; they are always overcome by the power of God. Joseph, thanks to the Spirit of God living in him, prevails over the soothsayers of Pharaoh (Gen. 41); Moses turns out to be stronger than Egypt. sorcerers (Exodus 7-9); Daniel puts to shame the Chaldean “mysteries and diviners” (Dan 2; 4; 5; 14). Therefore, the demonic army is defeated not by magical spells, which the religion of Babylon resorted to, but by prayer to God, who can prohibit Satan from committing his evil actions (Zechariah 3.2), and to arch. Michael, who, together with his army, leads a constant battle with the demonic hordes (Dan 10.13; Tob 8.3).

In the OT there is not only voluntary submission and service to demonic forces. The latter could themselves attack a person and even inhabit him, as evidenced by the impact evil spirit against King Saul, from whom “the Spirit of the Lord departed” (1 Sam. 16.14; 18.10). The Book of Tobit (6.8) mentions the torment endured by people from evil forces, naming one of the Persian demons. named Asmodeus (3.8).

Demonology in the New Testament

It is revealed through the prism of the struggle and victory of Jesus Christ, and then Christians over the devil. This is why the Son of God became incarnate “to destroy the works of the devil” (1 John 3:8) and “in order by death to destroy him who had the power of death, that is, the devil” (Heb 2:14). The struggle of Christ with the prince of darkness begins with temptation in the desert, although reminiscent of the temptation of the first people, but incomparably stronger.

Temptation of Christ in the desert

The ancient serpent again follows the path of deception, hiding behind the texts of the Holy Scriptures. Scriptures, which he uses as arguments for his lies (Matt 4:1-11; Luke 4:1-13). Confounded by Jesus Christ, he leaves Him “for the time being” (Luke 4:13). However, the Savior’s struggle with Satan and his dark kingdom does not cease throughout His public ministry. The phenomenon that Christ had to encounter quite often is the demonization of people. The widespread spread of this disease at the turn of the OT and NT was not accidental: the coming of the Messiah occurred at a time when the spirit of the people was extremely weakened, and its moral strength was largely lost. According to Christ, the “unclean spirit” enters a person only when it finds the dwelling of his soul “unoccupied, swept and put away,” of course, not to meet God, but to instill dark forces into it. “Then (the unclean spirit - M.I.) goes and takes with him seven other spirits more evil than himself, and they enter and live there” (Matthew 12.43-45). The direct presence of evil forces in a person causes him great suffering (Luke 8:27-29), but the demonic influence in such cases does not become absolute. In all circumstances, God “commands the unclean spirits with authority, and they obey Him” (Mark 1:27). Not only Christ Himself, but also His disciples have the power to cast out demons (Mark 16.17; Luke 9.1; 10.17). Moreover, the possession of such power is not an exceptional talent: “...do not rejoice that the spirits obey you; but rejoice that your names are written in heaven” (Luke 10:20). IN gospel parables Christ describes, in addition to demon possession, other ways of influencing demonic forces on a person. The parable of the sower and the seed says that the seed of the gospel preaching does not always find favorable soil in the hearts of people. Sometimes this is prevented by the devil, who “takes away the word (of God - M.I.) from their hearts, so that they do not believe and are saved” (Luke 8:12). The parable of the wheat and the tares paints a picture of the world, which “lies in evil” (1 John 5:19), where good, the Source of which is God, lives next to evil, which the devil “sows” ( Matthew 13. 24-30, 37-39). Possession may be not only the result of a person’s immoral life, but also a way of his upbringing. Yes, app. Paul delivered the Corinthian incest “to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that the spirit might be saved” (1 Cor 5:1-5). Any devilish temptation can be educational in nature if it is perceived and tolerated properly. Ap. Paul writes about himself: “...so that I would not become exalted by the extraordinaryness of the revelations, a thorn was given to me in the flesh, an angel of Satan, to afflict me, so that I would not become exalted. Three times I prayed to the Lord to remove him from me. But the Lord said to me: “My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor 12:7-9). The actions of dark forces are usually accompanied by deceit and deception, because the devil “did not stand in the truth, for there is no truth in him; when he speaks a lie, he speaks his own way, for he is a liar and the father of lies” (John 8:44). Satan may even take “the form of an angel of light” (2 Cor 11:14), and the coming of the Antichrist “according to the working of Satan” will be accompanied by “all power and signs and lying wonders” and “all unrighteous deception” (2 Thess 2:9-10 ). “The idea of lying to the Holy Spirit” (Acts 5. 1-3) was also suggested to Ananias by the “father of lies,” and the betrayal of Judas took place after “the devil... put this criminal intention into his heart” (John 13. 2). Judas’s agreement to betray Christ became a truly satanic sin, so after this Satan freely enters the heart of the traitor (Luke 22:3). Jesus Christ directly calls Judas “the devil”: “...have I not chosen you twelve? But one of you is the devil” (John 6:70). In addressed to the ap. Peter's reproof: “Get behind me, Satan” (Matthew 16:23) - Christ, according to some interpreters, calls Satan not the apostle, but the devil, who continued to tempt Him and to whom Christ had already addressed the same words (Matthew 4:10). “He (Jesus Christ. - M.I.) looked for a moment through Peter and saw behind him His former enemy...” (Lopukhin. Explanatory Bible. T. 8. P. 281). The Jews, blinded by malice, attributed demon possession to John the Baptist (Mt 11:18; Lk 7:33) and even to Christ Himself (John 8:52; 10:20). However, a possessed person cannot heal the sick (John 10:21) or cast out demons (Matt 12:24-29; Luke 11:14-15). “If Satan casts out Satan, then he is divided with himself: how can his kingdom stand?” (Matthew 12.26; cf. Mark 3.23-27). Jesus Christ defeats the devil not “by the power of Beelzebub, the prince of demons” (Matthew 12:24), but “by the Spirit of God” (Matthew 12:28) - this means that the “strong one,” that is, the devil, is already “bound” ( Matthew 12:29), “condemned” (John 16:11) and “he will be cast out” (John 12:31). However, he does not stop the fierce struggle both with Christ (John 14:30) and with His followers. He asks the apostles to sow “like wheat” (Luke 22:31). “Like a roaring lion,” the devil “walks around... seeking someone to devour” (1 Peter 5:8); he has “the power of death” (Heb. 2:14); he will “throw Christians into prison” (Rev 2:10). Satan creates all sorts of obstacles for the apostles who carried out the work of the gospel gospel (1 Thess. 2:18). Therefore, explains the ap. Paul, “we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places” (Eph 6:12). However, the “fiery arrows of the evil one” (Eph 6:16) should not bring fear to Christians. Dark spirits “tremble” before God (James 2:19); the violence they oppose to the power of God is in fact powerless. If a person shows submission to God and resists the devil, he will immediately “flee” from him (James 4:7).

Being spirits dark forces are not limited by space, but prefer to be in their favorite places. If the Old Testament texts refer primarily to pagan temples as such places, then the NT repeatedly speaks of demons invading people. At the same time, the spirits of darkness themselves sometimes forcibly drove the demon-possessed into lifeless and gloomy places, into deserts and tombs (Luke 8.29; Matt. 8.28). The request to send them to the herd of pigs, with which they turned to Jesus Christ (Matthew 8.31; Luke 8.32), can be explained by the fact that pigs, according to the Old Testament law, were unclean animals. The Revelation of John the Theologian reports that Babylon, for its debauchery, “became a habitation of demons and a haven for every unclean spirit” (18.2), and Pergamum, in which paganism flourished and a fierce struggle was waged against Christianity, became the city “where Satan lives ”, who set up his “throne” in it (2.13).

The activity with which Satan operates in various historical periods, depends on how much God allows him to show his evil will. Having won the victory over Adam and Eve at the beginning of history (Gen. 3.1-7), the enemy of the human race turned into a “prince”, by whose will (Eph. 2.2) pl. people lived throughout the Old Testament period (Heb 2:15). They walked “in darkness” and lived “in the land of the shadow of death” (Is 9:2). Being slaves of the devil, they became “dead” because of their own sins and crimes (Eph 2:1-2). And only with the Incarnation did hope arise that “the prince of the world will be cast out” (John 12:31).
Through his suffering, death and resurrection, Jesus Christ truly defeats the devil and acquires full power “in heaven and on earth” (Matt 28:18), and thanks to this victory “the prince of this world is condemned” (John 16:11) and is bound in his actions (Rev 20. 1-3). The thousand-year period for which the “ancient serpent” was “bound” (Rev. 20.2), interpreters define as the period from the Incarnation to the Second Coming of Christ (Aug. De civ. Dei. XX 8), when the devil no longer has his malice can manifest fully. After this period, he will be released “for a little time” (Rev 20:3) and will act not only as a tempter of individual people, but also as a seducer of the whole world. Then he will appear as “the angel of the abyss” (Rev. 9.11), as “the beast rising out of the abyss” (Rev. 11.7), and in the person of the Antichrist, in whom he will inhabit, he will manifest his destructive energy to the highest degree. However, he will not triumph for long; together with the Antichrist he will be thrown “into the lake of fire” (Rev 19:20). His fight against God will be so obvious that it will eliminate any need to be present at Last Judgment to determine his future fate. The devil and the angels seduced by him, having rejected God, thereby rejected eternal life, replacing it with existence in death, which is nothing more than eternal torment (see articles Hell, Apokatastasis).

Demon nature and hierarchy

Lucifer's sin damaged only his nature. In its consequences, it was not similar to the original sin committed by Adam and Eve and which left its mark on the entire human race. The rest of the angels who sinned after Lucifer fell “through example, through the influence that one person can have on other individuals... Lucifer attracted other angels with him, but not all fell...” (Ibid. P. 252). The nature of the angels, who remained in goodness, did not undergo any changes due to the fall of demonic forces.

Possessing a spiritual nature, the dark forces, like the angels who remained faithful to God, apparently also have a certain physicality (see Art. Angelology), but they are not subject to the laws of physiology. The idea that angels can have sexual intercourse with people, inspired by an erroneous explanation of the text of Gen. 6. 1-4, is not recognized by the Church. Tob 6.15, where the demon appears to those who love Tobiah’s bride, does not say anything in their favor, for demonic love always appears “with a minus sign.” The incident with Tobiah's bride found an explanation in Christ. ascetic literature, which describes in detail the carnal warfare of the ascetic with the demons of fornication.

The dark forces represent the kingdom of evil, headed by the devil himself (cf. Lk 11.18), who carried away with him in his fall, according to the expression of St. John of Damascus, “an endless multitude of angels under his authority” (Ioan. Damasc. De fide orth. II 4). Some interpreters, considering Rev. 12. 3-4, 7-9, which says that “the great red dragon,” “the great dragon ... called the devil and Satan,” “carried away a third of the stars from heaven and cast them down on earth,” it is believed that the stars here symbolize angels who fell away from God along with the devil (Lopukhin. Explanatory Bible. Vol. 8. pp. 562-564). Despite the fact that the fall of the angels brought disharmony and disorder into the created world, the kingdom of evil itself represents a certain structure, which is based on a hierarchical principle. This is evidenced by the apostle. Paul, who called certain ranks of the devil's hierarchy “principalities”, “powers”, “rulers of the darkness of this world” (Eph 6:12; Col 2:15). Since some of these names are used by the apostle in relation to good angels (Eph 1.21; Col. 1.16), it is not entirely clear how the hierarchy of the fallen angelic world is structured. There are two assumptions, according to which the angels included in it either remained in the same rank in which they were before the fall, or their rank is determined by the intensity of their atrocities (Ioan. Cassian. Collat. VIII 8).

Source: Orthodox Encyclopedia

The Devil and the Origin of Sin

As an evil creature trying to harm man and lead him into sin, Satan clearly appears in the book of Genesis, which tells how he, having entered the serpent, tempted our first parents and finally persuaded them to break the commandment of God - to eat the fruits of the forbidden tree ( Gen. 3); further, the devil is the same evil creature in the book of Job (Job.1:6-12, 2:1-7). The book of Chronicles says that “Satan rose up against Israel and stirred up David to number the Israelites” (1 Chronicles 21:1). Here Satan appears to have aroused David to number the Israelites and thus drawn him into sin, which David himself confessed to God (1 Chronicles 21:8) and for which the Lord punished the Israeli people with a pestilence (1 Chronicles 21:14).

In the same way, in the New Testament there are clear indications that the devil leads man into sin. First of all, his very name is “tempter” (Matt. 4:3; 1 Thess. 3:5), that is, tempting a person to sin. Satan is a tempter even in relation to Jesus Christ (Matt. 4:1-11; Mark 1:12-13; Luke 4:1-13). In the desert, where Jesus Christ retired after baptism, Satan appeared to Him and began to deceive Him with all his tempting means, such as: “the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life” (1 John 2:16). But Jesus Christ provided decisive resistance to all the temptations of Satan, so that the latter had to withdraw from Him and realize his powerlessness to lead the Son of God into sin.
The influence of the devil on the origin of sin in the human race is clearly recognized by the Savior in His parable of the seed and the tares (Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43). “The kingdom of heaven,” he says, “is like a man who sowed good seed in his field. While the people were sleeping, the enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat and went away” (Matthew 13:24-25). “The field,” according to the Savior’s explanation, “is the world, the good seed is the sons of the Kingdom, and the tares are the sons of the evil one; the enemy who sowed them is the devil” (Matthew 13:38-39). Thus, evil in the world seems, according to the Savior, to have been sown or originated from the devil. According to the Gospel, Satan inspired Judas to betray Jesus to the chief priests and scribes (Luke 22:3; John 13:2, 27). The Apostle John also clearly recognizes the devil as the originator of sin when he says: “Whoever commits sin is of the devil, because the devil sinned first. For this reason the Son of God appeared, to destroy the works of the devil” (1 John 3:8). Here, man's sinful actions are directly called the works of the devil. This means that their origin is influenced by the devil; that is why they are called his works. In the words of the Apostle Peter, in which he warns Christians against the wiles of the devil, we also find an indication of the participation of the devil in the origin of sin. “Be sober and watchful,” says the apostle, “for your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour” (1 Peter 5:8). Here the devil appears as an adversary of man, trying to destroy him; and he destroys a person when he leads him into sin.
From the passages presented in the Old and New Testaments, it is clear that the devil influences the origin of sin in man.

What should be the attitude of a Christian towards the devil?

Today we see two extremes. On the one hand, among modern Christians there are many who do not believe in the reality of the devil at all, who do not believe in his ability to influence their lives. Some people think that the devil is mythical creature, in which world evil is personified. On the other hand, there are many people who attach an exaggerated importance to the devil, who are convinced that the devil influences all aspects of a person’s life, and see his presence everywhere. Such believers are constantly afraid that the forces of the devil will somehow affect them.

On this basis, there are many superstitions, from which even church people are not free. Many “folk remedies” have been invented that would prevent Satan from penetrating a person. For example, some people, when yawning, cross their mouth so that the devil does not enter through it. Others manage to cross their mouth three times in one yawn. I have heard conversations about how an angel sits on our right shoulder, and a demon on our left: making the sign of the cross, we cross ourselves from right to left, throwing the angel from the right shoulder to the left, so that he can fight the demon and defeat him (Accordingly, Catholics who cross themselves from left to right transfer the demon to the angel). This may seem funny and absurd to some, but there are people who believe in it. And, unfortunately, these are not jokes, but real conversations that can be heard in some monasteries, seminaries, and parishes. People who think this way live in the belief that their whole life is permeated by the devil’s presence. I once heard a hieromonk, a graduate of a theological academy, teach believers: when you get up in the morning, before you put your feet into your slippers, cross your slippers, because there is a demon in each of them. With such an attitude, the whole life turns into torture, because it is all permeated with fear, the constant fear that a person will be “spoiled”, jinxed, that evil spirits will be brought upon him, etc. All this has nothing in common with the Christian attitude towards the devil .

To understand what a truly Christian attitude towards the devil should be, we must turn, firstly, to our worship, to the sacraments, and, secondly, to the teaching of the Holy Fathers. The sacrament of Baptism begins with spells addressed to the devil: the meaning of these spells is to expel the devil nesting in the heart of a person. Then the newly baptized person, together with the priest and recipients, turns to the west. The priest asks: “Do you renounce Satan, and all his works, and all his army, and all his pride?” He answers three times: “I renounce.” The priest says: “Blow and spit on it.” This is a symbol that contains very deep meaning. “Blow and spit on him” means “treat the devil with contempt, do not pay attention to him, he deserves nothing more.”

In patristic, and in particular monastic, literature, the attitude towards the devil and demons is characterized by calm fearlessness - sometimes even with a touch of humor. You can recall the story of St. John of Novgorod, who saddled a demon and forced him to take him to Jerusalem. I also remember a story from the life of Anthony the Great. Travelers came to him after walking for a long time through the desert, and on the way their donkey died of thirst. They come to Anthony, and he says to them: “Why didn’t you save the donkey?” They ask in surprise: “Abba, how do you know?”, to which he calmly replies: “The demons told me.” All these stories reflect a truly Christian attitude towards the devil: on the one hand, we recognize that the devil is a real being, the bearer of evil, but, on the other hand, we understand that the devil acts only within the framework established by God and will never be able to transgress these boundaries; Moreover, a person can take control of the devil and control him.

In the prayers of the Church, in liturgical texts and in the works of the Holy Fathers, it is emphasized that the power of the devil is illusory. In the devil’s arsenal there are, of course, various means and methods with which he can influence a person, he has vast experience in all kinds of actions aimed at harming a person, but he can only use it if the person allows him to do so . It is important to remember that the devil cannot do anything to us unless we ourselves open an entrance for him - a door, a window, or at least a crack through which he will enter.

The devil is well aware of his weakness and powerlessness. He understands that he has no real power to influence people. That is why he tries to persuade them to cooperate and assist. Having found in a person weakness, he tries to influence him in one way or another, and often he succeeds. First of all, the devil wants us to fear him, thinking that he has real power. And if a person falls for this bait, he becomes vulnerable and subject to “demonic shooting,” that is, those arrows that the devil and demons shoot into a person’s soul.

How to fight the devil

The Holy Fathers have a teaching about the gradual and step-by-step penetration of sinful thoughts into the human soul. You can become familiar with this teaching by reading the Philokalia or the Ladder of St. John of Sinai. The essence of this teaching is that a sinful or passionate thought initially appears only somewhere on the horizon of the human mind. And if a person, as the Fathers of the Church say, “stands guard over his mind,” he can reject this thought, “blow and spit” on it, and it will disappear. If a person becomes interested in a thought, begins to examine it, talk with it, it conquers more and more new territories in the person’s mind - until it embraces his entire nature - soul, heart, body - and induces him to commit sin. .

The path to the devil and demons to the soul and heart of a person is opened by various kinds of superstitions. I would like to emphasize: faith is the exact opposite of superstition. The Church has always waged a tough fight against superstitions, precisely because superstition is a surrogate, a substitute for true faith. A true believer realizes that there is God, but there are also dark forces; he builds his life intelligently and consciously, is not afraid of anything, placing all his hope in God. A superstitious person - out of weakness, or stupidity, or under the influence of some people or circumstances - replaces faith with a set of beliefs, signs, fears, which make up some kind of mosaic, which he takes for religious faith. We Christians must abhor superstitions in every possible way. We must treat every superstition with the same contempt with which we treat the devil: “Blow and spit on him.”

The devil’s entrance into a person’s soul also opens through sins. Of course we all sin. But sin is different. There are human weaknesses that we struggle with - what we call minor sins and try to overcome. But there are sins that, even if committed once, open the door through which the devil penetrates the human mind. Any conscious violation of the moral norms of Christianity can lead to this. If a person systematically violates, for example, the norms of married life, he loses spiritual vigilance, loses sobriety, chastity, that is, holistic wisdom that protects him from the attacks of the devil.

Moreover, any duality is dangerous. When a person, like Judas, begins, in addition to the basic value that forms the religious core of life, to cleave to other values, and his conscience, his mind and heart become divided, the person becomes very vulnerable to the actions of the devil.

I have already mentioned the so-called “reporting”. I would like to dwell in a little more detail on this phenomenon, which has profound historical roots. In the Ancient Church, as you know, there were exorcists - people whom the Church instructed to cast out demons from the possessed. The Church has never perceived demonic possession as a mental illness. We know from the Gospel many cases when a demon, several demons, or even a whole legion took up residence in a person, and the Lord, by His power, drove them out. Then the work of expelling demons was continued by the apostles, and later by the very exorcists to whom the Church entrusted this mission. In subsequent centuries, the ministry of exorcists as a special ministry within the Church practically disappeared, but still there were (and still are) people who are engaged in driving out demons from the possessed, either on behalf of the Church or on their own initiative.

You need to know that, on the one hand, the possessed are a reality that the Church encounters in everyday life. Indeed, there are people in whom a demon lives, which has penetrated into them, as a rule, through their fault - because in one way or another they have opened access for it inside themselves. And there are people who, through prayer and special spells, similar to those that the priest reads before performing the sacrament of Baptism, cast out demons. But there are many abuses based on “reporting”. For example, I saw two young hieromonks who, on their own initiative, were engaged in casting out demons from the possessed. Sometimes they provided this service to each other - one scolded the other for two hours. There was no visible benefit from this.

There are cases when priests arbitrarily take on the role of exorcists, begin to attract demoniacs and create entire communities around themselves. I have no doubt that there are clergy who possess divine healing powers and are truly capable of casting out demons from people. But such clergy must have the official sanction of the Church. If a person undertakes such a mission on his own initiative, this is fraught with great dangers.
Once, in a private conversation, one fairly well-known exorcist, an Orthodox clergyman, around whom crowds of people gather, admitted: “I don’t know how this happens.” He told one of the visitors: “If you are not sure that you are truly possessed, it is better not to come there, otherwise the demon can leave another person and enter you.” As we see, even this well-known and respected exorcist did not fully understand the processes that occur on the basis of “reading”, and did not fully understand the “mechanics” of expelling demons from one person and their entry into another.

Often people with certain problems - mental or simply in life - come to the priest and ask if they can go to such and such an elder for a lecture. A woman once turned to me: “My fifteen-year-old son doesn’t listen to me, I want to take him to school.” Just because your son is disobedient, I answered, does not mean that he has a demon. To some extent, disobedience is even natural for teenagers - through this they grow up and assert themselves. A lecture is not a panacea for life's difficulties.

It also happens that a person shows signs of mental illness, and loved ones see this as the influence of demons. Of course, a mentally ill person is more vulnerable to the action of demons than a spiritually and mentally healthy person, but this does not mean that he needs to be told off. A psychiatrist, not a priest, is needed to treat the mentally ill. But it is very important that the priest be able to distinguish between phenomena of a spiritual and mental order, so that he does not mistake mental illness for demonic possession. If he tries to heal mental defects by scolding, the result may be the opposite, exactly the opposite of what was expected. A person with an unbalanced psyche, finding himself in a situation where people are screaming, screaming, etc., can cause irreparable harm to his spiritual, mental and mental health.

In conclusion, I would like to say that the action, power and strength of the devil are temporary. For some time, the devil conquered from God a certain spiritual territory, a certain space in which he acts as if he were the master there. At the very least, he tries to create the illusion that there is an area in the spiritual world where he rules. Believers consider hell to be such a place, where people find themselves mired in sins, who have not repented, who have not taken the path of spiritual improvement, and who have not found God. On Holy Saturday we will hear wonderful and very deep words that “hell reigns, but does not reign eternally over the human race,” and that Christ, by His redemptive feat, His death on the cross and descent into hell, has already won victory over the devil - the very victory that will become final after His Second advent. And hell, and death, and evil continue to exist, as they existed before Christ, but they have already signed a death sentence, the devil knows that his days are numbered (I’m not talking about his days as a living being, but about the power that he temporarily disposes).

“Hell reigns, but does not reign over the human race forever.” This means that humanity will not always be in the position it is in now. And even those who find themselves in the kingdom of the devil, in hell, are not deprived of God’s love, because God is present in hell. The Monk Isaac the Syrian called the opinion that sinners in hell are deprived of God's love blasphemous. The love of God is present everywhere, but it acts in two ways: for those who are in the Kingdom of Heaven, it acts as a source of bliss, joy, inspiration, but for those who are in the kingdom of Satan, it is a scourge, a source of torment.

We must also remember what is said in the Revelation of St. John the Theologian: the final victory of Christ over the Antichrist, good over evil, God over the devil, will be won. In the Liturgy of Basil the Great, we hear that Christ descended into hell by the Cross in order to destroy the kingdom of the devil and bring all people to God, that is, with His presence and thanks to His death on the cross, He permeated with Himself everything that we subjectively perceive as the kingdom of the devil. And in the stichera dedicated to the Cross of Christ, we hear: “Lord, You have given us Your Cross as a weapon against the devil”; It also says that the Cross is “the glory of angels and the plague of demons,” this is an instrument before which demons tremble, and the devil “trembles and shakes.”