Satan, An Angel of Light by Milburn Cockrell

The name “Satan” means “adversary, enemy.” Satan is one of the names applied in Scriptures to the evil being we call the Devil. Satan has names because he has a personal existence. He is not an impersonal force nor the principle of evil personified. In the Bible personal names are given Satan, and personal acts and attributes are ascribed to him. Any person who doubts the reality of Satan’s existence is a wayfaring man or a fool.

According to Holy Scripture, Satan was created finitely perfect in his ways. Originally, his person had great beauty and brightness. In God’s angelic order he held an exalted position and high honor (Ezek. 28:11-14). His first position may very well have been to be the guardian and protector of the throne of God (Ezek. 28:14; Ex. 25:20; 37:9). Because of his lofty position his heart was filled with pride (I Tim. 3:7), and he directed to himself the worship due to God only (Ezek. 28:15-19). In consequence of his sin he was cast out, degraded in position and power, becoming the opponent of God and the arch enemy of man (Isa. 14:12-17).

Satan is a fallen angel. He is called in Ezekiel 28:14 “the anointed cherub” and “O covering cherub” in Ezekiel 28:16. “Cherub” is a term applied to angels in Scripture (Gen. 3:24). There were two cherubims of gold on the mercy-seat (Ex. 25:15-22; 37: 7-8; Heb. 9:5). These golden cherubims represented two angels of God.

Angels are known for their light (Jud. 13:6; Dan. 10:6; Matt. 28:3). God dwells in unapproachable light (I Tim. 6:16), and Christ is the light of the world (John 8:12). One of the names of Satan is “Lucifer” which means “day star.” Ezekiel 28:17 speaks of Satan’s original “brightness.”

Satan can resort back to playing the person he once was. I do not believe he approached Eve in a red suit with horns on his head and a pitchfork in his hand. I believe he first appeared to our mother as an angel of light (II Cor. 11:3, 14). Satan who took the form of a serpent was hidden away in a veil of light, making it appear that God had come again into the garden to speak with them. Eve must have thought that Satan was either God or maybe an angel from the court of Heaven. She was accustomed to approaching the light and talking with God. Many times since Eden Satan has appeared as an angel of light. He appeared in the days of Job in Heaven before God as an angel of light (Job 1-2).

A DECEIVER

The Devil operates in the realm of a lie: “Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it” (John 8:44). In Revelation 12:9 the red dragon is called “the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world.” He deceived Eve into believing God was a liar, when in truth he was the liar (I Tim. 2:14). As a consequence, his deception has settled upon the minds and hearts of Adam’s descendents. Such terms as “subtlety,” “blindness,” “deceitfulness,” “bewitched,” “craftiness,” “beguiled,” “wiles,” and “snares” are connected with him because of this.

There are two areas that Satan especially deceives people. First, there is the area of the Word of God. The Bible is God’s revelation of Himself and of our duty to Him. Since the Bible is God’s truth, Satan must deceive men concerning it. The Prince of Darkness is behind all attacks upon the integrity, the authority, and the divine inspiration of the Bible. This is a very old program of the Devil, for in Eden he offered Eve a new Bible version.

Perhaps as never before, the Bible is being bombarded without apology in universities, in colleges, in high schools, and in grade school by infidels, evolutionists, communists, socialists, and humanists. About the only book which cannot be studied in our government school system is the Bible. The educational world is propagating Satan’s lie that the Bible is not the Word of God. Liberal educators say the Bible is a curiosity of what poorly educated men once believed about God. These atheists say the Bible has no relationship to our life today. May the Lord deliver us from the deception which denies the integrity and authority of the Scriptures.

Note some statements in the writings of the Apostle Paul. “For we are not as many, which corrupt the word of God: but as of sincerity, but as of God, in the sight of God speak we in Christ” (II Cor. 2:17). Even in Paul’s day some professed Christians were corrupters of the Word of God. Hear him again: “But have renounced the hidden things of dishonesty, not walking in craftiness, nor handling the word of God deceitfully; but by manifestation of the truth commending ourselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God” (II Cor. 4:2).

In Corinth there were some hucksters who adulterated the Word of God. They weakened its authority and integrity. They accused Paul of being a liar because he did not believe what he preached. But it was the critics of Paul who were liars. Paul did not use any form of trickery to advance his preaching the Bible. His accusers were falsifying what the Bible actually said. The Accuser of the brethren was certainly behind all of these critics of Paul.

Satan corrupts men’s understanding of the Bible. He has some men convinced that the King James Bible is the only Bible they should read. He tells them not to look into the Hebrew and Greek, and by this he keeps them confused about the meanings of such words in our English translation as “hell,” “church,” “baptism,” “devils,” etc. They have been convinced that even the original Scriptures as written by Isaiah and Paul contained at least some errors. These were corrected by the inspired English translators in 1611, they say. They will tell you the only true and preserved Word of God we have is the KJV. Thus they cancel out about 1,780 years of the preservation of the Scripture for 391 years of preservation. This is about like Satan letting Christians observe the resurrection of Christ one day a year (Easter) so they can forget about it 51 other Sundays of the year.

SATAN DECEIVES MEN ABOUT CHRIST

In II Corinthians 11:3 we read: “But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtlety, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.” The supreme ambition of Satan is to take the place of Christ in the hearts of men. This is what he did in the case of Eve in Eden. When Satan succeeds in turning men from Christ, he knows that impurity will follow. At Corinth he had divided the affections of some of the church members, and they had returned to the practices of their unconverted days.

In I John 2:21-22 it is written: “I have not written unto you because ye know not the truth, but because ye know it, and that no lie is of the truth. Who is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ? He is antichrist, that denieth the Father and the Son.” A liar is one who denies Jesus Christ is the Messiah, the eternal Son of God who came to redeem sinners. I John 4:1-3 says: “Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world. Hereby know ye the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God: And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come; and even now already is it in the world.”

Any person who denies that Jesus Christ took on true manhood permanently is possessed of the spirit of Antichrist, and he is a religious liar. Any person who makes Jesus Christ less than the eternal Son of God who came in the flesh is doing the work of the Devil. These words should strike terror to the hearts of false cults and false teachers.

Most modern-day churches do not alarm Satan, for they are in truth synagogues of Satan (Rev. 2:9). The Evil One is a very active member of most of the Sunday morning social clubs. Satan does not care what is taught in churches and religious schools so long as the preachers and teachers in these institutions subtly and satanically deny the truth of the Word of God concerning the person and work of Jesus Christ.

One danger in our generation, which did not exist in former times, is new Bible versions. I say “new Bible versions” because a translation to be true to its name is the writing down of the message into another language without changing its meaning. Many of the translators of our modern Bible versions have been men who were not committed to the full verbal inspiration of the Bible, and their low views of Scripture is reflected in their looseness of translation. If a translator is a natural man, he cannot understand the things of God (I Cor. 2:14) and cannot be trusted to put God’s thoughts into correct English.

This is why I keep to the King James Version of the Bible. Though not Baptists, the translators of the KJV believed that every word placed in the original text was exactly as God intended. Their regard for verbal inspiration in translating is reflected in the use of italics in the translation wherever words were added in the English which were not in the Hebrew and Greek manuscripts, a practice not followed in modern versions.

The King James Version was a translation of the Received Text or Textus Receptus, which is the Greek text which was preserved by the Anabaptists and the Greek speaking churches themselves. The KJV was from the Masoretic Hebrew Text. I believe that the Masoretic Hebrew Text and the Textus Receptus Greek texts are the preserved Word of God in the original languages in which the Bible was first written. I also believe that the King James Version is a faithful translation of these manuscripts, and this is why I use the King James Version.

Most modern versions are based on a different Greek text by men like Westcott, Hort, Nestle, and Bible societies. There are over 2,000 differences from the Received Text and these other Greek texts. Many of these new versions degrade God and Jesus Christ. Whole verses are omitted, or significant portions of a verse are omitted. There are times that one or more words are omitted and substitutions offered. The portions omitted include over 200 names of God and 150 pronouns referring to Deity. It does not take a seminary graduate to know who is behind such faulty translations. Beware of any Bible version which degrades the person and work of Jesus Christ.

AN ANGEL OF THEOLOGY

We have an account of the temptation of Christ in Matthew 4:1-11 and Luke 4:1-13. According to Luke, our Lord was tempted 40 days. Matthew tells us that it was at the end of the 40 days that Christ was hungry, and then Satan presented the Second Adam with three temptations. There is no contradiction here. Jesus was tempted for 40 days, and then there were three final temptations in the last of the series.

In the temptation of Christ Satan appeared as an angel of theology. The temptations of Christ were threefold and similar to those he used on Eve in Eden (I John 2:16). First, there was the lust of the flesh. Jesus had not eaten for 40 days and was in the dreary desert of Judea. Earlier the Father had said at Jordan: “This is my beloved Son.” Satan suggested that if He were the Son of God, He would not be hungry: “If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread. But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God” (Matt. 4:3-4). Christ resisted this temptation, and He proved He could not be tempted to depart from the Word of God.

The second was the pride of life. “Then the devil taketh him up into the holy city, and setteth him on a pinnacle of the temple, And saith unto him, If thou be the Son of God, cast thy self down, for it is written, He shall give his angels charge concerning thee: and in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone. Jesus said unto him, It is written, again, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God” (Matt. 4:5-7). Here Satan perverted the Scriptures to make them say what God never intended. Christ resisted and proved He could not be tempted from the Word of God.

Third, there is the lust of the eyes. From a high mountain Christ saw all the kingdom of the world and the glory of them. “And saith unto him, All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me” (Matt. 4:9). If Jesus would worship the Devil, He would have at once become the king of the whole earth. Christ again resists the Devil: “Then saith Jesus unto him, Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve” (Matt. 4:10).

AN ANGEL OF LIGHT IN FALSE TEACHERS

Even in the New Testament period some claimed to be on the level with the twelve apostles. These were tried by the churches, and they found them to be “false apostles” (II Cor. 11:13). As Satan changes his appearance to masquerade as an angel of light, Devil-called preachers transform themselves “as the minister of righteousness” (II Cor. 11:15). They pretend to be preachers of righteousness and truth, but they are in fact “deceitful workers” (II Cor. 11:13) and wolves “in sheep’s clothing” (Matt. 7:15).

Satan saw Jesus Christ commission His church to preach the good news (Matt. 28:19-20). The Prince of Darkness commissioned his preachers to go out and preach lies. Christ’s ministers preach in the power of the Holy Spirit, but Satan’s ministers preach in the power of demons: “Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils” (I Tim. 4:1; cf. Eph. 2:2; I John 4:1). A better rendering of the Greek would be “doctrine of demons” (The Greek word translated “devils” is daimonion---“demons.” There is only one Devil but many demons). The expression “doctrine of demons” does not mean doctrines about demons, but the doctrines which demons teach.

Devil-called and demon-controlled preachers go forth to deceive men as they propagate a lie. They preach “another gospel” (Gal. 1:6) and another Jesus. II Corinthians 11:4 reads: “For if he that cometh preacheth another Jesus, whom we have not preached, or if ye receive another spirit, which ye have not received or another gospel, which ye have not accepted, ye might well bear with him.” These false teachers, who pretend to be angels of light, will tell you Jesus Christ was a good person, but not God’s eternal Son. They will attack the atonement of Christ, and they will say that God did not need to be propitiated, or that the redemptive work of Christ was a failure.

These heretics deny the cardinal doctrines of the Bible. While masquerading as ministers of righteousness, they are ministers of Satan. They will tell you that man does not need to be regenerated by the Holy Spirit, and to teach such reflects upon the integrity of human nature. They would have you reason: “Did God not make man?” Did God not do His work well?” If these emissaries of the Devil cannot convince you regeneration is needless, then they insinuate that baptism regenerates and the sacraments have efficacy.

These angels of light make what is wrong appear to be right, and what is bad appear to be good: “Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!” (Isa. 5:20). These demon-controlled preachers make temptations appear white instead of black. The voice that calls to sin sounds like the voice of an angel of light rather than a demon of darkness. Young and old are led astray by the angel-dress of beautiful speech. How easily these heretics make vice look like virtue. Gentle names are given to the worst of sins. Infidelity and scepticism are called “free inquiry.” They tell us the worst of crimes must be overlooked in “a spirit of toleration.” The wrong use of names confounds moral distinctions, and perplexes and misleads men in regard to duty. Right must not be called wrong, or wrong right.

The ministers of Satan have great talent. They can make folly seem to be wisdom (This is what the Devil did to Eve). They make refusal to forgive others appear to be keeping one’s self-respect. They make covetousness seem to be a wise provision for the future. They make world conformity seem the best means of exerting a worldly influence over people. These Devil-called preachers tell teenagers that true religion is something to be delayed until they are old and gray-headed. These deceivers convince struggling sinners that salvation is too hard, or that there is no mercy left in God!

CONCLUSION

1. Satan was once an angel of light. He still knows how to play an angel, and he often does. That is why we must watch out for him and his kind. It is not an ugly Devil we need to dread, but a pretty white Devil. The Prince of Darkness will not appear to be as bad as he really is. To do so would defeat his purpose of deceiving people.

2. We cannot judge by appearances. We must get below the surface of things. We must go to great lengths to ascertain right and good. Some of the worst men are priests, popes, deacons, Sunday school teachers, and preachers. Angels of light can be demons of darkness. Doctors of theology can be doctors of damnation.

3. Animals can play dead, but a man can disguise himself and live in a constant masquerade. All that glitters is not gold. Many are not what they seem to be. There is at least some hypocrite in us all. Beware of hypocrites in the church, less you entertain demons unaware!

4. Be on guard against Satan and his crowd. “Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you” (Jas. 4:7). “Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour: whom resist steadfast in the faith, knowing that the same afflictions are accomplished in your brethren that are in the world” (I Pet. 5:8-9). Abide in Christ who alone can keep you safe. If we live in constant fellowship with Christ, no disguise of Satan shall deceive us.

5. Sinner, beware of an angel of light. Look out for a white Devil. Be on guard, for Satan will steal this sermon from your mind. It is said of the way-side hearer: “Then cometh the devil, and taketh away the word out of their hearts, lest they should believe and be saved” (Luke 8:12).

A BRIEF LOOK AT SATAN