I have a couple of questions regarding Satan and the temptation of Christ in the desert.
Christ tells us to love our enemies. Satan is his enemy.
- Does it mean he loves Satan too? - Is Satan a person that has fallen to sin or is he the personification of evil and sin? - If he is a fallen person, where does he come from and can/will he be saved? I don't believe that him being a fallen angel was mentioned anywhere in the Bible. - If he is the personification of evil and sin, how can Jesus still love him? - If he is the personification of evil and sin, then who created him? - If he was created by God, wouldn't that mean that God created evil and sin? - If Satan is not real and his presence is only metaphorical, then who spoke to Christ and was tempting him? Did the temptation come from his own heart?
Not trying to provoke anyone or ask trick question, just wanted to understand that part better.
Let me just stop you there. When God says to love our enemies, he means our /personal/ enemies: people who have wronged us in some way. But we are /supposed/ to hate the enemies of God. The idea that you should love Satan is completely ridiculous.
Psalms 139:21-22
Dominic Martin
Yes He does. Much like a father loves his disobedient child and wishes the child would come back into his arms, God too wishes satan would stop being a degenerate and come back to Him Satan is an angel that has fallen not a person. Angels are vastly different than humans. Angels are made with 100% knowledge of the Gospel and are given the choice to be obedient to God or not, like humans. Unlike humans, once the choice is made it can never be undone. So satan and the fallen angels choosing to disobey God are reprobate and can unfortunately never come back to the fold. Their pride makes them incapable of doing so. Not everything that is sufficient for your faith is in the Bible. No, He did not. Satan chose to do evil out of his own freewill. Much like how humans choose to do evil out of their own free wills as well. God never wills evil. God only wills we do good. It is up to us to obey. No, he is very real just like his minions are very real.
Ven. Archbishop Fulton Sheen goes into detail about the nature of angels.
Christopher Reed
Okay, I get what you are saying, but the Psalm you quoted was made by David, who is just a regular person, and not Jesus. I mean, a lot of what is written in the old testament is contradicted by what Jesus teaches in the new testament.
If God wishes for them to repent, why not give them a way to do so? If he sent his own son to save humans, he could just as well have offered a way for the fallen angels to be saved as well.
Jose Russell
And here is one on The Devil
Hudson Moore
God does give the devil and the demons the ability to do so, but they choose not to. Their pride has gotten in the way of that. Again, you can't equate the knowledge of a human with the knowledge of a spirit. For spirits have no limitations like humans do when it comes to knowledge. In fact they already have all the knowledge readily available to them. They know about God's majesty and justice. They know about Lord Jesus Christ and His Immaculate mother Mary. They know about all those things but they do not care as their pride makes them think they are above it all. They are incapable of changing. Thus they are reprobates and they did it to themselves.
You can't force someone to love you. If God forced us and the demons to "love" Him we wouldn't have free will and would be incapable of love. We would be mindless automata incapable of making our own decisions. God doesn't want that for His creation. God wants us to freely choose to love and obey Him.
Vatican exorcist Fr. Chad Ripperger on the theology of demons.
Christopher Martin
Thanks for the explanation and the videos, there is just one more thing I don't understand about the chapter you provided.
It says:
12 “Son of man, take up a lamentation over the king of Tyre, and say unto him…
I always thought that the quote in question was in fact about the king of Tyre and not a fallen angel and him (the king of Tyre) being an anointed cherubim was just hyperbole.
Cameron Roberts
T. Hasn’t read the Bible
Joshua Jones
Nope, the Bible was written by God.
Evan Reed
Consider this. When Christ goes to the land of the Gerasens and meets the man possessed by a multitude of demons that calls itself Legion, Legion begs Christ for a small mercy. Legion is afraid of being cast out of the man and into the ether, so it begs Christ to let it infest a nearby herd of swine. Christ grants Legion this small mercy. Legion, of course, immediately abuses it by destroying all of the pigs, but nonetheless this is the occasion on which God showed mercy to demons. God's mercy and love are infinite, and extend even to the fallen angels. Just be aware that human mercy and love are not infinite, and therefore it's probably not safe for you to go around loving demons.
Xavier Thompson
Your claim that this was Christ granting a demon mercy isn't found in scripture, it's just your interpretation. It's a very dangerous idea to say that Christ would ever show mercy to a demon, since Christians are called to be like Christ.
Christopher Miller
I'm pretty sure I read that Legion running off into the pigs and getting them killed was supposed to symbolize their banishment into Hell. So what was a "small mercy" was definitely tempered by Christ's Justice.
Samuel Scott
Who was inspired by God you baboon. All of the bible is Gods inspired word
Adam Moore
Where in the bible does it say all that about demons and angels? Otherwise nice fanfiction
Unlike Jesus, David was not infallible, nor was he a prophet. And he was far from perfect - surely you will remember his major screw up and the horrible thing he did. I don't see why we have to take a song he wrote as gospel.
Gabriel Hill
He was a prophet. Majority of Psalms is the foretelling of coming of Christ. Nevertheless, general attitude and opinion about the topic was that yes God loves everyone and everything, and we should emulate him, at least according to Orthodoxy. But love doesn't mean compliance to our enemies. In addition to that, we should understand the reason behind the two commandment that Christ states are equally important, that is "love God" and "love thy neighbor". While former is understandable, the latter is about the human beings and the reason is that we are children of God, made in His image and likeness and what's most important, Christ assumed our nature. In other words, we are essentially family members and of one massive household, who's Head and Father is God. But it cannot be said in same way about angelic beings who's nature Christ did not assume. Paul talks about this in Hebrews and John of Damascus has a really good commentary in treatise about Icons (I'm on the phone now, so I can't find the exact part). And there are church fathers, like St. Basil, who talks about hate and wroth directed towards Satan as a virtue.
Blake Russell
Where in the bible does is say muh sola scriptura?
Noah Garcia
Does that mean we can just make things up as we go and make it canon? Let's invent time-traveling aliens from another dimension because why not?
Eli Wilson
At least purgatory and stuff like that got some biblical basis. I'm just asking for where these ideas come from? It just seems like made up lore to explain heavenly beings we know almost nothing about. If God saw fit to not reveal us this then I think there might be a reason
Julian Rivera
You mean like what you prots do all the time?
Actually watch the videos related. They explain it better than I could.
Oliver Moore
Try not to forget, though, what Exodus teaches us about God's wishes. Remember that Exodus 32 teaches us about the golden cow, the false idol of worship. One might consider The New Testament a sort of faith exercise in this regard.
As much as it might feel insulting to consider Jesus Christ a golden cow, consider Corinthians 2:6 says about us. Technically, we are all God's children, and thus so was Jesus Christ. This by no means is to say that Jesus Christ was not a man to be followed– he preached wonderful things about the world, and with the faith he preached in his tenure of the world, he deserved the praise he got. Though, of course, he was not the Lord. He was the Lord's son. Technically, this makes him a golden cow as well. And you listen to him, after all!
So do remember, many people in the world will attempt to shift you off your faith. What you need to remember is your heart is ultimately what guides you in this world. But even those who attempt to shift you away may put you on a path toward discovering the truth of the Lord in your heart.
Jesus Christ can lead you on that path, and so can a prophet such as David. Just remember to be on guard and defend yourself from Satan's army attempting to remove the Lord from your heart.
Jackson Smith
Nice deflection and whataboutism you got there, also, strawman. Not a prot, btw.
