Why does God Allow Satan to live

[unholy1971]

I just watched the below video on You Tube titled, "Why does God Allow Satan to live", the pastor tries to answer this question and gives an absolutly laughable response.  Check it out at the link below.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmOzTY06mBo

[Sgtmackenzie]

Satan is the tempter, so why doesn't god just take satan out?

"Some who would say, he really can't!"

My attempt at quoting - [God has ordained that Satan has a long leash (like a dog?) and God holds that leash.   God wants us to struggle with sin(?)   To come to him by having to resist the temptations he allows to happen(?)     If we resist this idea and argue, we deny god and we will perish.]

So the moral of the lesson is "Just believe in God anyway or you will perish"

Laughable is right!

[yepimonfire]

Satan is the tempter, so why doesn't god just take satan out?

"Some who would say, he really can't!"

My attempt at quoting - [God has ordained that Satan has a long leash (like a dog?) and God holds that leash.   God wants us to struggle with sin(?)   To come to him by having to resist the temptations he allows to happen(?)     If we resist this idea and argue, we deny god and we will perish.]

james 1:13 When tempted, no one should say, "God is tempting me." For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone;

[The Magic Pudding]

Maybe god is a trilogy in four parts.

[Asmodean]

Maybe god is a trilogy in four parts.

Or maybe it wants The Asmo to have someone to hang out with down under... Just to keep him from pillaging heaven and causing general mayhem 

[Egor]

This pastor should have prepared a better answer to the question, I will give you that. In fact he threw out a lot of words without really answering anything.

The fact is Satan is apparently a servant of God used to purify the human race. There is no indication in the Bible that Satan is anywhere but in heaven. Some will quote Isaiah 14, but that's nonsense. Anyone reading that passage will immediately deduce that Isaiah is talking about an earthly king (the king of Babylon) who tried to make himself equal to God and was brought down as a result.

In the book of Job, Satan is in heaven. In the Gospels, Satan acts as an instrument of God's plan to tempt Jesus to take on an earthly kingship.

Don't think for one minute that Satan sins; he doesn't. He isn't that stupid. Disregard Paradise Lost, disregard the misinterpretation of Isaiah 14, and you will see that Satan is an angel just like Gabriel or Michael, but his mission is not to fight or announce things but rather to purify the human race.

I think most of the time you atheists simply punch at air.

[yepimonfire]

This pastor should have prepared a better answer to the question, I will give you that. In fact he threw out a lot of words without really answering anything.

The fact is Satan is apparently a servant of God used to purify the human race. There is no indication in the Bible that Satan is anywhere but in heaven. Some will quote Isaiah 14, but that's nonsense. Anyone reading that passage will immediately deduce that Isaiah is talking about an earthly king (the king of Babylon) who tried to make himself equal to God and was brought down as a result.

In the book of Job, Satan is in heaven. In the Gospels, Satan acts as an instrument of God's plan to tempt Jesus to take on an earthly kingship.

Don't think for one minute that Satan sins; he doesn't. He isn't that stupid. Disregard Paradise Lost, disregard the misinterpretation of Isaiah 14, and you will see that Satan is an angel just like Gabriel or Michael, but his mission is not to fight or announce things but rather to purify the human race.

I think most of the time you atheists simply punch at air.

i used to believe this. this is incorrect sir. read revelation. also the king of babylon could not have been in the garden of eden. the problem is satan is very different throughout the bible. the NT is where our modern view of satan comes from.

from revelations 20 starting at verse seven.

" 7 When the thousand years are over, Satan will be released from his prison 8 and will go out to deceive the nations in the four corners of the earth—Gog and Magog—and to gather them for battle. In number they are like the sand on the seashore. 9 They marched across the breadth of the earth and surrounded the camp of God's people, the city he loves. But fire came down from heaven and devoured them. 10 And the devil, who deceived them, was thrown into the lake of burning sulfur, where the beast and the false prophet had been thrown. They will be tormented day and night for ever and ever."

also in matthew 25  41 "Then he will say to those on his left, 'Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.

[OldGit]

Egor, the interpretation you give is alien to everything we hear from traditional Christianity.  Satan has been portrayed as the Evil One (sorry, Asmo) for centuries.  So please don't accuse us of punching at air: Satan's traditional rep is pretty solid.

[Asmodean]

Satan has been portrayed as the Evil One (sorry, Asmo) for centuries.

Nono, is poyfect. Can be The Asmo's own personal MiniMe. 

[Gawen]

In fact he threw out a lot of words without really answering anything.

Funny you should call the kettle black like that. You do the same thing.

[DeterminedJuliet]

Egor, the interpretation you give is alien to everything we hear from traditional Christianity.  Satan has been portrayed as the Evil One (sorry, Asmo) for centuries.  So please don't accuse us of punching at air: Satan's traditional rep is pretty solid.

Don't you know that any time we can't read Egor's mind and inherently know his personal, specific, Christian doctrine it's because of the flaws of Atheism?

[joeactor]

Ok, so lemme get this right.

Based on the video, Satan is allowed to live to make God look better?
(from the vid: "God ordains all of these things so that his glory—his mercy, justice, grace, wisdom—would shine more brightly.")

... and God tortured his own son by exposing him to Satan, so that we could learn from his son's suffering how great of a guy God is?
(from the vid: "the glory of God and Christ shines more brightly when we are seen to be supremely satisfied in Christ in spite of Satan's torments, rather than if we had his torments removed and liked Jesus because of it.")

Wow.

God better hope that none of his neighbors report him to child protective services ;-)


Frankly, I've heard much better arguments for why God allows Satan to live...

[squidfetish]

Frankly, I've heard much better arguments for why God allows Satan to live...

For the lulz?   

[Gawen]

Well...consider Job. God has Satan do everything he wanted to Job except kill him, as a test. What was Job's reaction? "Though he slay me, yet will I hope in him" (Job 13:15). Job, I think, did not understand why God allowed the things He did, but continued to trust in Him.

But you see, there are no "good" people. The Bible makes it abundantly clear that all of us are tainted by and infected with sin : Ecclesiastes 7:20; Romans 3:23; 1 John 1 : 8
Romans 3:10-18: "There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God. All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one. Their throats are open graves; their tongues practice deceit. The poison of vipers is on their lips. Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood; ruin and misery mark their ways, and the way of peace they do not know. There is no fear of God before their eyes."

Every human being on this planet deserves to be thrown into hell at this very moment and the reason why we're not all wailing and gnashing our teeth is by the grace and mercy of God. Even the most terrible misery we could experience on this planet is merciful compared to what we deserve, eternal hell in the lake of fire...so "they" say.

Anyway, Satan lives because:
Romans 11:36: "Everything comes from God alone. Everything lives by His power, and everything is for His glory."
or:
"From Him everything comes, through Him everything exists and in Him everything ends."...depending on your flavour of Bible.

And:
2 Corinthians 5:18: All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation...

And:
1 Corinthians 11:12: For as woman came from man, so also man is born of woman. But everything comes from God.

More:
John 1:3: "All things were made by him; and without him was not anything made that was made" I don't know where Velvetta Cheese and foie gras comes into play here.

1 Timothy 4:4: For everything God created is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving... So, except Satan into your life and reject him not, but with thanksgiving. Velvetta cheese and foie gras, those being not so good, are optional. Know that "The LORD works out everything for his own ends...(Proverbs 16:4).

[Melmoth]

The fact is Satan is apparently a servant of God used to purify the human race. There is no indication in the Bible that Satan is anywhere but in heaven. Some will quote Isaiah 14, but that's nonsense. Anyone reading that passage will immediately deduce that Isaiah is talking about an earthly king (the king of Babylon) who tried to make himself equal to God and was brought down as a result.

In the book of Job, Satan is in heaven. In the Gospels, Satan acts as an instrument of God's plan to tempt Jesus to take on an earthly kingship.

Don't think for one minute that Satan sins; he doesn't. He isn't that stupid. Disregard Paradise Lost, disregard the misinterpretation of Isaiah 14, and you will see that Satan is an angel just like Gabriel or Michael, but his mission is not to fight or announce things but rather to purify the human race.

Interesting interpretation! I'd say you're in a minority there, but an interesting one. I wouldn't go along with it personally, since his being an angel wouldn't answer the question. Why is there a need for him? Why would God's plan for mankind antagonise itself by having temptation knocking around to throw it off course?

re. the video: I don't think it's that dumb, really, but I don't agree with it and it is badly expressed. Satan represents 'evil', crudely speaking, but he's also a powerful symbol of moral choice and independent will. He was the first being of God's creation to demonstrate a capacity for those things through disobedience. So he represents in us a sort of atman - a sense of self all of its own, separate from that of God. And this is firmly a part of the mythos surrounding him, provided you don't do what Egor does and disregard great swathes of it.

Let's not disregard Milton's Paradise Lost, for instance, which has influenced our ideas about Satan probably just as much as the Bible has. Here you've got Adam and Eve, hopping around in the garden of Eden, batting their eyelids and talking about how wonderful everything is. They're no better than those arrogant, snooty angels. They're not "good" because they don't even know what "goodness" is; they're 'clockwork oranges', incapable of moral choice, or of being anything other than what they are: selfless, innocent and beautiful - not to mention bland, mindless and meaningless.

Satan comes along in serpent form and changes all that by saying, "hey, didn't you know? You don't have to just do as you're told. You can do your own thing. You can eat whatever fruit you please."

Immediately after eating the fruit and talking to God, Adam and Eve have a great little spat. They start blaming each other for what's happened, each trying to absolve themselves, both being very petty. But petty as they're being, the scene illustrates how they've ceased to be two-dimensional caricatures of innocence; they're now aware of themselves, and of each other, as separate beings with separate motives and interests. So Satan gives us ourselves, essentially. Myself as opposed to you. From which we get difference, conflict, cruelty, humour, art, beauty, fruitful communication and virtually everything else. He needs to exist in order to make us complete beings, meaningfully self-aware and self-directed. Think of it as god's way of pushing us out of the nest. That'd be how I'd rationalise it.

The preacher man's idea of God is quite ugly in a way. That he torments us only to make his "mercy" a greater relief... something doesn't add up there.