What does Satan do with his days, knowing that he has no time to waste. In 1 Peter 5:8-9, Peter warns the Church: “Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour. And the next word in his writings is? “Resist him” (v. 9). To avoid falling into the devil's trap, you must learn to resist him with firm faith, as the Bible says.
Many people don't quite understand the meaning of the word resist him. Of course, the word resist Satan sounds ridiculous. Because as humans, we are less able to resist Satan in our own strength. We can see the example of Eve, the first lady of the Garden of Eden, unable to resist the temptation of the devil.
WHAT DOES RESIST MEAN?
1)Resisting is the action or effect of opposing something that wants to destroy you, like the antibodies that help us resist infections.
2)To resist is also to fight against something.
3)Be waterproof or prevent entry.
4)Refusing to accept or be changed by anything.
SYNONYMS OF VERB RESIST:
1) Get up
4) Struggle
5) Fighting
3) To oppose
4) Disobey
5) Confront
6) Outlast or (Survive)
7) Repel
NB: Before trying to understand how to resist the devil, you must first take the time to understand who the Devil is.
WHO IS THE DEVIL:
The Devil also known as Satan and sometimes also called Lucifer in Christianity. Is an entity that seduces humans into sin or lies.
In the gospel of John 8:44, Jesus says that his Jewish enemies are the children of the Devil. The same verse describes the Devil as a liar and the father of lies.
In Christianity he is seen as a fallen angel who rebelled against God, but God nonetheless grants him power where he temporarily rules over the fallen world and over a multitude of demons and some human beings who are in captivity under his control.
Throughout the New Testament, Satan is referred to as a “tempter” (Matthew 4:3), “the ruler of demons” (Matthew 12:24), “the god of this age.” 2 Corinthians 4:4), “the evil one”
(1 John 5:18), and “a roaring lion” (1 Peter 5:8).
STORY OF THE DEVIL:
According to the Bible, he was cast out of heaven because he refused to bow before God and incited other angels to rebel against God. When he came down to earth, he used his deceptive cunning and managed to cause many human beings to sin, causing him to rebel against God and infect their minds with evil thoughts.
The Beast of the Apocalypse representing the devil in the form of a 7-headed dragon. Revelation 12:3 describes a vision of a great red dragon with seven heads, ten horns, seven crowns, and a massive tail, an image likely inspired by the vision of the four sea beasts in the book of Daniel.
And Leviathan describes in various passages of the Old Testament and The Great Red Dragon which causes a third of the sun, a third of the moon and a third of the stars to fall from the sky and pursues the Woman of the Apocalypse. 12:7-9 declares war on heaven.
About this war, the Bible says that Michael and his angels fought the dragon. The dragon and his angels resisted, but they were defeated and there was no longer a place for them in heaven. Dragon the Great was thrown down, that ancient serpent called the Devil and Satan, the one who deceived everyone, he was thrown to the ground and his angels were thrown with him. Then a voice rang out. of Heaven announcing the defeat of the Accuser and identifying Satan of the Apocalypse with the serpent of the Old Testament.
THE AUTHORITY AND POWER OF THE DEVIL:
He has the authority and power over a group of fallen angels and over the people he himself initiated into his evil activities, those we call Satanists. He also has authority over all those who obey his lies and over the categories of humans we call unbelievers.
WHAT THE DEVIL LOOKS LIKE?
The form and personality of the satant are complicated to specify
because it has no precise form in the Bible. We see it take many forms ranging from snake to dragon, sometimes it resembles a roaring lion.
Thus, Satan's true appearance is never described in the Bible, but since the 9th century he has often been depicted in Christian art with horns, cloven hooves, unusual legs and a tail, often naked and holding a fork.
Although the book of Genesis does not mention it, Christians often identify the serpent in the Garden of Eden as Satan. In the book of Revelation, Satan appears as a great red dragon, defeated by the archangel Michael and thrown from heaven because of his rebellion.
SURPRISE ABOUT THE DEVIL:
Although Satan is generally considered evil, some groups of people, such as Satanists, consider him a deity and worship him.
THE EVIL WORKS OF THE DEVIL:
In the Synoptic Gospels Satan even attempts to tempt Jesus in the desert and in Christianity he is identified as the general cause of illnesses, deaths, sufferings, failures and temptations, possessions, obsessions, enchantments and bad thoughts.
Biblical example of his evil works:
Luke 22:3-6 states that Judas Iscariot betrayed Jesus because “Satan entered into him, and in Acts 5:3 Peter describes Satan as filling the heart of Ananias and causing him to sin. John 13:2 describes the Devil as having inspired Judas to betray Jesus. The Synoptic Gospels identify Satan and his demons as the causes of illness, including fever
(Luke 4:39), leprosy (Luke 5:13), and arthritis (Luke 13:11-16).
In the Bible, Satan even dares to recover the bodies and souls of certain prophets of God upon his death. Example of the great prophet Moses in Jude9 which refers to a dispute between the archangel Michael and the Devil over the body of Moses.
WHAT THE DEVIL IS NOT:
Some Christians associate Satan with the number 666, which Revelation 13:18 describes as the number of the beast. However, the beast mentioned in Revelation 13 is not Satan. Rather, it will be the false messi whom we call Antichrist who will be the son of Satan in whom Satan will give all his power. Well 666 will be the numerical value of the name of the Antichrist in Hebrew. Whoever carries this mark on him will confirm his affiliation with the beast and will live with the devil in hell.
THE END OF THE DEVIL:
End of the Devil according to the Bible, he will first be bound for a thousand years, but will be briefly released before finally being defeated and thrown into the eternal lake of fire, he and all those under his power.
In Revelation 20:1-3, Satan is chained and cried into the abyss, where he is imprisoned for a thousand years. In Revelation 20:7-10, he is released and gathers his armies with Gog and Magog to wage war against the righteous, but he is overcome by fire from heaven and finally thrown into the lake of fire.
NB: Now that we have understood who the devil is, we can now return to our topic
“HOW TO RESIST THE DEVIL”. To learn how to resist the devil, we first begin with the example of Jesus and learn the techniques used by our Lord Jesus Christ to ultimately resist the devil, overcoming his temptation and wickedness.
HOW JESUS RESISTED THE DEVIL:
The three Synoptic Gospels all describe the temptation of Christ by Satan in the desert (Matthew 4:1-11, (Mark 1:12-13) (Luke 4:1-13).
At the beginning of the temptation scene, Satan begins by showing Jesus a stone and telling him to turn it into bread. He then takes him to the top of the Temple in Jerusalem and orders Jesus to fall to the ground, telling him that the angels will catch him if he dares to fall.
Much later, Satan attempts to bring Jesus to the top of a high mountain; there he shows him the kingdoms of the earth and promises to give them all to him if he will bow down and worship him.
Satan's promise in Matthew 4:8-9 and Luke 4:6-7 to give Jesus power over all the kingdoms of the earth if he will bow down and worship him, and we see in this conversation the Devil insists about the fact that all these kingdoms belong to him. But the fact that Jesus does not dispute this promise from Satan indicates that the authors of the gospels believed it to be true. Which confirms the position of the Devil as being the prince of this world, that is to say the one who manipulates the political, social and economic system which governs our planet.
So through this temptation the Devil wanted to tell Jesus that I have the power to raise you or lower you because here on earth it is I who controls the world system but Jesus refuses his offer by resisting him and showing him that he has no power over him. And we notice that every time the devil approaches Jesus, he rebukes Satan, and after the third temptation, the angels came to serve Jesus. The word rebuke means to resist, so every time the devil approaches to tempt him, Jesus resists him by refusing to obey him. And he ended up chasing him away.
We notice that in Jesus' strategies to resist the Devil, he used two things:
the Scriptures and the word.
When we speak of the Scriptures, we see the word of God, and when we speak of the word, we see the mouth. So you cannot win any spiritual battle if you do not know how to oppose the devil with your mouth, so you must open your mouth in prayer. Second, you must read and know the word of God if you wish to be victorious before the Devil.
NB: the devil is an enemy stripped of his authority and defeated by our Lord Jesus Christ at the cross of Golgotha. He therefore has no power over all those who give their lives in Jesus Christ.
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