p. 15 | Belief in a Personal Devil

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Aug 4, 1910

_Belief in a Personal Devil_

With the growing tendency to depart from the simplicity of Bible faith has come a marked tendency on the part of many to spiritualize away plain Scriptural teaching. The personality of God is denied, and Deity is regarded as a sort of essence filling all space, without any definite existence in fact. The same reasoning denies all personality to satanic agencies, making of them evil impulses only. Prof. James Orr, D. D., discusses in the Sunday School Times of June 4 the belief of Christ in a personal Satan. In affirming that Jesus believed in a personal devil, he sums up a very able argument as follows:—

We come, therefore, by exclusion of the others, to the third of our alternatives: that Jesus did believe in an evil spiritual world, and in its action among men; in a personal Satan and his kingdom; and that his belief is true. Christ was not in error in what he affirmed. Popular or figurative language he may have used, but the seriousness of the belief at the heart of it is unmistakable. He did not share in the error of his contemporaries: traces of these are absent from his teachings. He did not confound all diseases with demonic possession; he clearly distinguished them. He saw to the heart of disease in man; for he cured it. There is no improbability—rather analogy suggests the highest probability—of realms of spiritual existence outside our sensible ken. That evil should enter this spiritual world, that human life should be deeply implicated with that evil, that its forces should have a presiding mind and will organizing and directing them,—these are not beliefs to be dismissed with scorn. Jesus held them; facts verified them; history is not without abundant corroboration of them. We do well to be not high-minded, but to fear, in our own relations to them.

As Professor Orr states, we do well to fear in our relations to these evil powers. Keeping pace with the growth of the no-devil theory has been the rise of modern Spiritualism, claiming as its mission the demonstration of the immortality of the soul, and the establishment of communion between the living and the spirits of the dead. These purported spirits of the dead are nothing more than personal demons, as clearly taught in the Scriptures of truth; and their work of deception is made all the more effective from the belief taking possession of men that Satan does not exist in fact. Cunningly and adroitly is he leading men from the simplicity of their faith, and preparing them for the last great deception, which will engulf their souls in impenetrable darkness.