How should we think of Satan and spiritual warfare?
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I was raised charismatic and spent ten years Pentecostal. As you may know, those movements are all into like praying against the spirit of this, or rebuking and binding the spirit of that, and so on and so forth. So my question is basically, do we need to think of or be afraid of Satan? How should we think of Satan? You know, he prowls about like a roaring lion, seeking who to devour.
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What does spiritual warfare entail? One of the pastors here said that spiritual warfare is just warring against your own sinfulness. So basically, how should we think of Satan, or should we think of Satan? Should our mind just be on worship? Well, it’s a good question. We don’t want to be ignorant of Satan’s devices, that’s what Scripture says. We don’t want to be ignorant of his devices.
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Satan comes at us through devices, he comes at us through the world system. Satan, first of all, is not omnipresent, okay. He’s fast, but he’s not omnipresent. So the notion that whatever’s going wrong in your life is specifically Satan at work is just not accurate.
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Satan has a host of demons as well who do his bidding around the world, but primarily he functions with this system of evil that is basically within the human race. So a fallen race of people are basically in the hands of Satan. The whole world lies in the lap of the Evil One, that’s what Scripture says. So it’s not a matter of us fighting Satan as a personality, but it is important that we not be ignorant of his devices.
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And he goes around as a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour, not in some personal encounter with Satan, but he goes around creating an environment in the world that becomes solicitous to what is evil. He drives the world system at the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. Just look at advertising alone.
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Just look at television alone or film or any form of media; it is just loaded with things that appeal to the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. That sort of sums up the contemporary human philosophy. We have a right to be proud. We have a right to fulfill our desires. We have a right to fulfill even what we lust for. This is all legitimate. This is Satan’s big lie.