SATAN, THE PERSONAL DEVIL
(first part)
by Anthony F. Buzzard
Translated and commented by Apolos Hummerich
A contemporano of John Thomas, the founder of the cristadelfianismo, produced a controversial work in 1842 titleholder the DEVIL: A BIBLICAL EXHIBITION OF the TRUTH WITH RESPECT TO the OLD SERPENT, DEVIL AND SATAN AND a REBUTTAL OF the BELIEF OBTAINED IN the WORLD ABOUT the SIN AND ITS ORIGIN a critic of this book described like “elaborao attempt to it to reject the existence of the Devil, adding a test but to this horrible reality�
Clearly there is a subject of the greater importance here. He is tragic that still exists divisions and doubts between the students of the Bible approach the what the Scriptures mean with the Satan, the Adversary, the Devil, the Serpent and the Tempter.
The informative book of Alan Eure, the Protestants, draws up fascinating history through the centuries of the groups of little orthodox beliefs that the group as the Cristadelfianos and the Church of God of the Faith Abramica have shared. These principles include the firm belief in a future and millenarian reign of Earth Christ, the mortal soul, in a God, the rejection to the Trinidad, and the rejection to take part in the war. He is nevertheless remarkable that Eyre was able to only find two references to the extraordinary belief that Satan in the Bible talks about to the badness in the nature human and not to a personal creature.
It is a fact that the believer in a Satan not-personnel must load that belief against practically all brothers that share with the rejection to the traditional dogmas. The works of Justino Martyr and Ireneo, spokesmen of the Church in the century second, do not show a Trinitarismo in later the CalcedĂłnico sense (although they do not reteneĂan the belief in the absolutely human MesĂas of the New Testament):  they either do not show the belief in the immortality of the soul in the sky after the death, nor in the fire of eternal hell, these works are even strongly millenarian. The notion of which Satán is not a personal creature, nevertheless is absolutely other people's to its writings. This means that Ireneo, “great pupiloâ€? of Juan the Apostle through Policarpo, was become lost in thought badly of its important point but:  an appropriate understanding of Satán. It is this credible proposal?
It is our intention to show that not only he is not desirable or at least reasonable in view of the history of the doctrine, but, but important, the idea not-personnel this cradle in an unjustifiable treatment of Scriptures. It is a dangerous, divisive error in his effects, and person in charge to throw doubts on the credibility of his exponents and teachers of the Bible. It is an error, nevertheless, that can be corrected, provided with a will to maintain to us besides the tradition and to examine the subject carefully, if it is necessary during an extensive period of time.
There is no doubt that the popular belief in the medieval devil, with a tridente and revolviendo the flames of hell, is a cartoon of the scriptural devil. We must, nevertheless, keep from our natural tendency to jump from an end to other to try to ignore the personal devil of the Bible. If this personal Devil exists, nothing would please to him but that to have its existence denied by those exponents of the Scriptures that have seen through the erroneous lessons of the “Orthodoxy�.
To say that the Trinidad, in you feel but popular, is not in the Bible is in fact to only say what numerous students admit. To proclaim millenarian kingdom of Christ the future is to make echo to the opinions of the first 250 years of Christianity and many theologians of all the times. To deny the immortality of the soul is to align one same one with the conclusions of the experts in the writings of all the denominations. But to deny that the Satán (by ex. Satán as it names own) is a being other people's to the Scripture, is without embrargo, with few exceptions, practically not known in the history of the exegésis. This situation requires an explanation in which it can agree with the facts of history as well as with the facts of the Bible.
This writer to examined in detail the treaty conclusions written by the Cristadelfianos and has discussed the question at a great level with his main exponents. A very important fact arises from those studies: the exponents of the “not-personality� constantly ddistorsionan the difference between satán and the Satán. In this unfortunate one put of leg, the complete misunderstanding about the meaning of the word “Satán� is constructed. Not even one would deny that there are occasions in the Old Testament in which the term� satán� is applied to a human adversary (right as in the New Testament the term “diabolos� (devil) can sometimes talk about to human prosecutors, 1 Tim 3:11) the question which we faced is that it means by the SATAN or the DEVIL in the book of Job, Zacarias and sixty times in the New Testament (not to mention numerous the other references to the SATAN under a different title)
When Mateo presents/displays the terms Kingdom of God and Reino of Skies, it assumes that the readers are familiarized with those phrases. Cuandoel introduces the term the Devil (Mat. 4:11) being it called Tempter (v before. 2) use a recognizable good title for their readers. Â A tempter or a prosecutor does not speak in any place on.
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He will be very instructive observing as Cristadelfiana Literature confuses the subject from the beginning: “The Satán word… simply means an adversary, as it is evident for whom has been well-educated in the following instances of this use: “The Gentleman raised an adversary (“satán�) to Salomón, You foretell, the Edomita. (1 Kings 11:14),� In the battle (David) he will be an adversary for us (1 Samuel 29:4). There are instances in the new one testamente, where Jesus describes to Pedro like “Satán� when he is against to the submission of Christ the death (Mateo 16:23), when Pergamo, the quarter of the general of the enemies of the truth is I decipher like the seat of Satán (Revelation 2:13). Now if Satán means adversary we we are going intelligently to read the writings in any place in which we read Satán� (the Only Evildoer, by Robert Roberts, page 12)
Unfortunately, nevertheless, Mr. Roberts has swindled to us presenting/displaying the text of Revelation 2:13 to us without no indication of the fact that the text says that the SATAN (not “satán�) has their seat there. The SATAN is very different from the mentioned indefinite adversaries of the Old Testament.
The fundamental error now has been established and the argument comes from a false premise: “The temptation of Jesus usually is mentioned in opposition our conclusions. The great function of the narrative is the application of the word “devil� to the tempter: but this nontest nothing. If Judas can be a devil, and also to be a man, why could also not have been the tempter of Jesus a man?  That “devil� has been call nontest nothing. (Idem, p.19)
What it is not allowed to see us is that the tempter of Jesus is not called a devil, is called the DEVIL (Mat 4:5, 8, etc), that is to say, the unique and only Devil that all we know. The Cristadelfiano argument continues with this mixed basic error: “Devil� test that this was one that I take care to itself to turn aside to Jesus of the footpath of obedience. Who was he is impossible to say because we have not been informed.� (Idem, P. 19)
The reading average of the book of Job and the events of the temptation in Mateo and Lucas will find very difficult to think that the Satán that acted as the Tempter were a not known human being, as the Cristadelfianos proposes. John Thomas and his followers, in spite of their invaluable work of Biblical exhibition in other subjects, has reprovable distorted the writings doing to disappear the definite article.  This is what we will not do. The Satán, the Adversary, is the external personality that it touched to Jesus and Job. A tragic error was committed by Roberts when it writes “Why the tempter of Jesus could not be a man� That it has been call “devil� nontest nothing�. It was not, nevertheless, call “devil� but the Devil was called. Roberts has removed the word from the text, and by extension of the sixty or but appearances that the Satán and the Devil have through all the New Testament.
When a group of students of the Bible arrives at the same conclusion but they cannot be put in agreement among them about the arguments on which the conclusion is constructed, there are usually reasons to think that the conclusion is false. They are accepting the creed because this she has been dictated to them by his leader. They always possibly believed in the principles of the group. They have not examined personally the arguments in detail, because quite often they have very little exhibition to the opposite points of view and they have been defied never. They can accept the excellent truths taught by their founders and in his enthusiasm they swallow an ERROR like part of the package. All we are exposed to commit this error. God requires of us an enthusiastic desire to know the truth: we must stay PERSONALLY responsible before by everything what he teaches himself to us like “the oracles of God�.
Anton Lavey: founder of the Church of Satán. The doctrine of this satanic cult is identical to the cristadelfiana doctrine: Satan IS NOT a PERSON, but the evil that we took inside. The Church of Satán is the unique registered religion that agrees in this doctrine with the Cristadelfiana Church at official level. The satanistas took this doctrine from previous mystics like Aleister Crowley learned that it of old Egyptian and babylonian cultured religions pagan and.
The Cristadelfianos is incapable to put itself in agreement about the identity of the Tempter of Jesus. The contemporary cristadelfianos but insist that Jesus was speaking with itself in the desert.  Aside from the difficulty that this creates about the IMPECABILIDAD of the Gentleman, he is artbitario in end to say that when Mateo reports that the tempter “arrives at Jesus and speaks� (Mateo 4:3), it means that the own mind of Jesus produced distorted versions of the Escrituras.Mateo finishes the description of the Temptation saying that the devil started off and that Los Angeles “arrived at him� (Mattteo 4:11) to ministrar to him. In what interpretation principle we can justify taking the words “to arrive at him� with two different senses in the same paragraph? Where in the writing the human nature arrives at a person and it speaks to him?  If the game of Satáns means the cease of the temptation of the human nature of Jesus, why not to conclude that the arrival of Los Angeles means the comfort of the spirit of God within him?  It could some falllar in seeing that the treatment of the writings that the Cristadelfianos `proposes in this pasage avoids the flat and level meaning of lenguage?
This it is satan of the cristadelfianos: the internal demon who whispers to the believer who makes the evil. A CARTOON OF PAGAN ORIGIN.
The Cristadelfianos but old is correctly indignant of which somebody at least suggests Jesus was attemped in the desert by its own mind. A Cristadelfiano wrote: “Some think that the devil in the case of the temptation of Christ was its own inclination., but this is untenable in the sentence that says “when the devil finished all the temptations, separated from by one season. He is also inentendible from the point of view of the harmony that exists between the mind of Christ and the mind of the Father (Juan 8:29) could also be added that it is untenable because a tempter or devil, for example, one that tries to invariably seduce the evils a SINFUL one (Mateo 18:7) is that he is in itself or in another one. … (This is clearly illustrated in Marks 4:19�
Biblical Satan is an angel and it teaches it explicitly to the bible: “And it is not wonder, because same Satan continues transforming itself into light angel. “2 Corintios 11:14 (it nótese that it does not say that is transformed into an angel, but in ONE OF LIGHT, for which it obvious requires already to be an angel previously)
He is remarkable that numerous attempts of the Cristadelfianos to outside clear the notion of a personal devil, avoid a detailed analysis of Mateo 4, the history of the temptation. It would have to be obvious for each reader of that passage (it has been clear for million readers through history)  that an external personality tempted Jesus, and who that external personality was called the Tempter, the Devil, the Satán. The use of the article only has sense if this it is “the Devil that all we know� ( to suggest, as some cristadelfianos do, that were the Extreme Priest is a desperate evasion! ) The Scriptures speak sometimes of “the Jesus� (with the definite article in Greek), that is to say, “the Jesus who all we know�. If the Devil were well well-known in the mind of Mateo, we must go to the Old Testament, intertestamental Jewish Literature and the rest of the early Christian Literature of the New Testament to find that it meant with the PERSONAL NAME Satán.
A single reference in the Old Testament to Satán like a INTERNO.La tempter does not exist clearly Serpent of Genesis, WAS NOT the own human nature of Eva. It was an external personality that spoke to him and that reasoned with her with a refined boldness. In the same way, “satanases� of the Old Testament (without the definite article) that presented/displayed opposition were invariably EXTERNAL PEOPLE. It is not less than incredible than anyone can propose that the Devil of Mateo 4 (when the term happens for the first time in the New Testament) is a “internal personality�, for example the “human nature�. This suggestion imposes an idea OTHER PEOPLE'S to Scriptures. (*) Still more, “the spiritualized� method of exegésis necessary to darken the fact that a real person I arrive next to Jesus and spoke to him would cause, if it will be applied in any place, that all the events of the Bible became unintelligible and without sense. This same technique was used successfully by the churches to put outside the writings the Millenarian Reign of the Coming Era.
He is appropriate that we establish our understanding of the Biblical terms from both sources, the evidence of the Scripture like a whole and from the contemporary sources to the times of Jesus. We have for example ample evidence, of the Kingdom of God talking about to a reigned future messianic.
(aim of the first part of the translation, next second and last part. I am thankful for to the Buzzard brother by the excellent article and the privilege to translate it for illumination of all the brothers that have been blinded by the God of this system that is the main one interested in hiding its existence. He is not accidental that the two religions that deny their existence are their own official Church the Church of Satan, and on the other hand a church that is so near the truth as the cristadelfianos brothers)
(*) COMMENTARY OF THE TRANSLATOR: Although any Biblical reference to the concept of an impersonal devil does not exist, if numerous pagan references to this concept exist. What is worse: some SATANIC sources exist officially that adhere to this concept and whose conception of Satán is exactly identical to which they own the cristadelfianos. For the founder of the modern Satanism, Dr. Anton the Vey, first Pope of the Church of Satán, Satan is not a person but the human tendency to the carnalidad and the sin. The cristadelfianos use in their writings very many phrases that are identical to the phrases of satanista Literature. We see an example: � For the satanistas the Devil is considered like: to be or forces Metaphysical; or like mysterious innate element in the human being; or unknown natural energy. “, http://www.apologetica.org/cultos-satanicos.htm#_ftn5.  This conception of a personified inner demon is present in numerous pagan religions of the antiquity, some of them creian in inner duality, GOOD I and BAD I in struggle, as we can see in many cartoons. Therefore when the cristadelfianos say that the devil of horns and tail is a carticatura and besides pagan origin, they ignore the fact that the IMPERSONAL DEVIL in which they also create is a cartoon and not only of pagan origin, but a doctrine maintained by the main satánistas cults of the modern world. The image of a small inner diablito saying to him to a person who makes the evil while another small little angel says to him that it does or is exactly the cristadelfiano concept of Satán and is a cartoon creida and maintained by very many people and represented in infinity of cartoons, films and works as much or but that the being of horns and tail revolviendo the boiling pot. The Biblical Devil in counterpart is a supernatural being among many created, inferiors to the Only God by nature, that is against to the intentions of God by its own interest and said concetpto he is absolutely judeocristiano, not being present in no other religion of the antiquity.
