SATAN'S PERSONALITY

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Mar 31, 1887

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 13, No. 13.

SATAN'S PERSONALITY.

THERE is a large class of men, both within and without the church, who often speak and reason about the devil, but who seem to think he is only a fanciful personification, or representation—a figure, a type, or something else, of sinful principles. They have reduced him to a mere abstraction. The evils of the world and misfortunes of life they attribute in no way to Satanic influence,—to no outside pressure or temptation whatever,—but solely to the depravity or the irregularities of human nature. Revelation, however, states the case otherwise. It varies not in a single instance from presenting Satan as a real person, having power on earth, and to be feared among men. The different names by which he has been designated in the Scriptures are suggestive of his nature and personality. The term "devil," for instance, which in the Greek means "the traducer, the calumniator," and in English, the enemy of mankind, implies personality.

The same is true of the term "Satan," which means an adversary, or a personal foe of the race. Of similar import are the Greek term "Apollyon," and the Hebrew "Abaddon," by which he is sometimes designated, which means an evil angel, or the angel of the bottomless pit. The forms of expression, as well as the particular words employed, suggest the same idea. He is always referred to in the singular number. More than twoscore times is he called "Satan," a term which is never employed in the plural number. Upwards of fifty times he is called "the devil," invariably in connections requiring the singular number. He is called "the prince" and "the god of this world," "a roaring lion," one that "sinneth from the beginning," "Beelzebub," "accuser," "Belial," "deceiver," "dragon," "liar," "leviathan," "Lucifer," "murderer," "serpent," "tormentor." These expressions imply, beyond question, actual and individual personality.

If the Bible referred to Satan only under one class of circumstances, if it employed but one term, and that an abstract one, we might then regard his existence as only imaginary.

But the frequent allusions to him, direct and indirect,—the great variety of circumstances under which he has been mentioned by inspired poet, historian, and prophet, by the disciples, and the Lord Jesus himself,—compel us to adopt an opposite conclusion. Christ was entirely mistaken, or there is a supernatural spirit of evil. The wilderness of Judea and the Apocalypse are scenes of actual presence, and displays of actual power. The daring and warlike imagery of the Scriptures, which represent God and Satan as sovereigns of hostile empires, means something. "The power of Satan," "the power of darkness," "the prince of the power of the air," these are no fictions of distempered brains. There is no mysticism here. These are conceptions of terrible meaning to minds which felt the antagonism of literal and living forces, which comprehended the ideas of loyalty and disloyalty, of life and death. The doctrine of Satan’s personality pervades revelation. The body of it stands or falls with its admission or rejection. The doctrine in this respect is vital. No evangelical Christian can by any means ignore it. It is one of the constructive ideas of the inspired word. We can get rid of it only by rejecting the system of revelation in which it appears, everywhere present, everywhere consistent with free agency and existing evil, and everywhere uttering its warnings to be sober and vigilant.

—Professor Townsend, in "Credo."