The Origin of Satan. Why does God allow evil? Where did the devil come from? The devil was an angel bible
Until this day, or, more precisely, before reading this article, many of you knew only about various cases of demons possessing a person. For example:
In 1949, in Georgetown, a 13-year-old boy “played” a seance. In those years, summoning spirits was a very fashionable activity among adults and children. Soon the “souls” got in touch - the boy heard strange knocking, scratching... In a word, the game was a great success! However, at night, when the child was put to bed, a crash was heard around the icon hanging in his room, then creaks, sighs, and heavy steps were heard. This went on for several days and nights. The parents decided that this was the spirit of a recently deceased relative, who was very attached to the child during his lifetime.
However, the “spirit” behaved too strangely for the loving uncle: the child’s clothes began to disappear, and then suddenly appear in the most unexpected places. The chair in which the boy was sitting suddenly turned over. At school, notebooks and textbooks of classmates were flying through the air! Finally, the parents were asked to take the boy out of school and hire him private teachers. But first, show it to the doctors. The doctors listened to the story of the young patient’s parents, did tests and declared the child absolutely healthy. However, when the boy’s voice suddenly changed - from a childish one it turned into a low, rough, hoarse voice - the parents became seriously worried.
The priests gave the boy a “diagnosis”: possession by the devil. The ritual of exorcism (driving out the devil) lasted 10 weeks. All this time during the sessions the child demonstrated unprecedented strength, easily throwing aside the priest's assistants holding him. Strangely, he moved his head like a snake, spitting right in the eyes of those around him. Once during the ceremony he managed to escape from the hands of the servants. He rushed to the priest, snatched the ritual book and... destroyed it! He destroyed it, not tore it apart: before the eyes of astonished eyewitnesses, the book turned into a cloud of confetti! After ten weeks, the child forgot that, while struggling, he broke the hands of two assistant priests, that he threw himself at his own mother with a knife... He became a devout Catholic and lived a righteous life.
The Roman Catholic Church believes that demons, having taken possession of a person, can manifest themselves in two ways: either by knocking, an unpleasant odor, or the movement of objects - this is an “invasion” into our existence; or by the changed behavior of a person who “suddenly begins to shout obscenities, his body convulses. This state is called obsession.
In 1850, a woman appeared in France, around whom strange knocks and cracks were always heard, foam sometimes came out of her mouth, the unfortunate woman convulsed and shouted obscenities. And having reached a more or less calm state, she suddenly began to speak Latin... In the same place, in France, fifteen years later lived two brothers who suffered from obsession. In addition to the traditional “set” of oddities - convulsions, shouting blasphemy and so on, they could also predict the future and make objects fly through the air.
In 1928, in the state of Iowa (USA), the story of a woman who suffered from obsession since the age of 14 was very popular. Her illness consisted in the fact that she experienced a physical aversion to the church and objects of religious worship. The woman was already over 30 years old when she decided to undergo the ritual of exorcism. At the first ritual words, some unknown force tore her from the hands of the church servants, carried her through the air and seemed to stick her to the wall high above the door of the temple. There was nothing to hold on to the wall, but with great difficulty they managed to separate the possessed woman from the wall and return her to the hands of the servants. This went on for 23 days. All this time, knocking, grinding, and wild howls were heard in the church building, horrifying the parishioners. Then the unclean spirit left the woman’s body and the walls of the temple, but after some time it returned and tried to do its dirty deeds again. The second rite of exorcism went much easier, and the demon left his “object” now forever.
The Canadian newspaper The Sun in 1991 described the ritual of exorcising a spirit from a 15-year-old Indian girl. A young and not very experienced priest, Guntano Vigliotta, took it upon himself to exorcise the demon from the poor thing. He was warned that it was dangerous to carry out the exorcism ritual alone. However, Vigliotta did not heed the advice. The session in the house of the possessed woman lasted two hours. Suddenly the girl’s mother, who was watching what was happening from another room, heard strange screams. Then everything went silent. Some time later, the mother entered the room where the ceremony was being held and saw a terrifying picture: the priest’s body was literally torn into pieces, and the possessed girl was unconscious. Having come to her senses, she remembered the voice that sounded in her brain during the ritual: “My name is the Devourer! Kill the priest!”
In October 1991, one of the US television channels broadcast a report about the exorcism of a demon from a 16-year-old American girl, Gina. That day, about 40 percent of the country's viewers gathered in front of their televisions. Bishop Keith Silamons allowed such a display and accompanied it with the words: “The devil really exists. He is strong and has been active on the planet for all centuries.”
But in fact it turned out that these were just flowers. Production studio Fresh Production UA has prepared a new series of mystical programs for the K1 TV channel called “Hidden Reality.” In the first cycle, September 14, 2010, in one of the stories. From the on-camera interview, it follows that from the first seconds (according to the parents and the medical staff serving them), the newborn spoke quite literate Russian. Quite legibly and clearly the baby said something that led everyone into panic.
“The Devil has already come to Earth!” - said the baby in the voice of an adult man. Shocked by what they saw and heard, everyone was temporarily speechless.
Here, at last, our famous saying has been confirmed: “Through the lips of a child, the truth speaks!”
According to the ‘Apocalypse’ of St. John the Theologian, 7 seals have already been broken, 4 horsemen of the Apocalypse have appeared and the 7th angel has already sounded the trumpet, i.e. The Antichrist is already here. Therefore, the most secret secret of the last decade is the information that the Apocalypse, Armageddon and the Second Coming of Jesus Christ will take place before our eyes, over the coming years, since almost all the signs of the coming of the Antichrist to our world have already occurred, and before his final accession , as world ruler, he and his earthly servants had only four prophecies or signs of his coming to fulfill. Everything fits together. Signs of the coming of the Antichrist have come true:
The Jews will restore their state (Ezekiel, chapter 36, verse 24; Blessed Hippolytus, link above). Implemented in 1947.
There will be a world war (wars), there will be severe famines, pestilences and earthquakes. ("Gospel of Matthew", chapter 24, verses 6-7). The entire twentieth century was the fulfillment of this prophecy.
Christians will be handed over to torture and killed, people will hate each other and betray their neighbors (“Gospel of Matthew”, chapter 24, verses 9-10) Implemented in Bolshevik Russia from November 1917 until the time of strengthening Stalin’s power in the country, then , again in Khrushchev times.
False prophets will arise and deceive. It has been implemented since the second half of the twentieth century, through the flourishing of religious sects with “God” at the head.
The Gospel will be preached throughout the world “...and then the end...” (Matthew chapter 24, verse 14)
You and I can only push back the end of the world for some time, thanks to pure, spiritually strong people. The more such people there are and become, the longer you and I will live.
Since the 16th century, ancient tablets have been kept in the secret vaults of the Vatican, engraved with the story of the final battle between Good and Evil. Chilling events must put an end to our world and become a prelude to the reign of the Devil in it.
It was decided to tell about the predictions inscribed on these tablets in 2001, when everyone in the world was convinced that the end of the world would not happen. However, Pope John Paul II for some reason forbade this, and only recently the matter was started again.
Lucifer Museum
On the eve of the third millennium of the Christian era, many predictions about the coming end of the world appeared. Some soothsayers scheduled it for 1999, but when nothing terrible happened, they began to push the fateful date into the future. First - in the first decade of the 21st century, then - further and further.
The essence of the story about the end of the world, as we know, is that after the Antichrist seizes power on Earth, a decisive battle between the forces of light and darkness will take place, after which the Kingdom of God will ultimately reign on our planet.
The fact that this should happen exactly this way is an immutable truth for sincerely believing Christians. The only question that is unclear to them is: when will these events occur.
But in the last century, followers of various esoteric teachings joined the theologians of Christian doctrine. Among them, the most complete description of the decisive battle between the forces of light and darkness was the teaching of living ethics (Agni Yoga), which came from the pen of Helena Roerich. Even during her lifetime, many esotericists called Helena Roerich the living Mahatma.
According to Roerich's revelations (according to her, which came to her as a result of communication with the highest spirits of the earth), the decisive battle between the forces of good and Satan will take place at the beginning of the third millennium in the skies above Altai, namely above Mount Belaya. After such a clear indication of the place of the coming of the army of the forces of light and the future appearance of the banner of peace to earthlings, the followers of Helena Roerich, preparing for a meeting with the higher world, elevated White Mountain to the rank of saints and began to venerate it with special rituals.
But unlike esotericists, many people who have lost their faith have much more questions about the future battle of the forces of light and darkness. Starting at least with this, does Satan really exist, who will elevate the Antichrist to the world throne and thereby begin a dark period in the life of mankind?
A fairly convincing answer to this and many other questions can be found in the Lucifer Museum in the Vatican. The museum was created with the blessing of Pope Pio XI in 1933 in the basement of the Church of the Sacred Heart of the Martyr. According to the 11th director of the secret museum, Stefan Mezzofanti, the purpose of creating such a terrible cultural and historical monument is not to make public the machinations of the devil, but only to show the average person the capabilities of a fallen angel.
With the blessing of the Pope, the museum displays hundreds of pieces of evidence proving that Satan really does roam the world. “The objects in this museum are undoubtedly evidence of the machinations of the Evil One,” says museum curator Father Ismaro Benidicti. - The Church accepted them as concrete evidence of the existence of the Devil. We don’t make them public or talk about it, but we keep them to show what the Devil is capable of.”
In the museum, for example, there is a prayer book that belonged to a young Italian woman who died of horror on the night in 1578 when Satan appeared to her. The book, which she dropped in fright, was burned in those places where the hand of the Prince of Darkness touched it.
Another exhibit is the dress of the French Countess Sibylle de Merker, who met the Devil in the deserted courtyard of her own castle in 1357. The hem of the dress is burned in the place where Satan's hand touched.
The museum also has prophecy plates made of black onyx, which, according to research, are at least 10,000 years old. These plates are said to clearly indicate many, if not all, of the great evils that await human civilization.
Hitler's Blood Pact
An equally ominous exhibit of the secret museum in the Vatican is “Hitler’s Bloody Pact.” This unusual document was found by German monks in 1946 in an old chest, which was pulled out purely by chance (or maybe not?) from a burning house located on the outskirts of Berlin. The records are badly damaged, but can still be read.
After carefully studying the text, a group of Vatican experts concluded that the document was indeed a contract that Adolf Hitler entered into with Satan himself. The contract is dated April 30, 1932 and signed in blood on both sides.
According to him, the Devil grants Hitler virtually unlimited power with the condition that he will use it for evil. In exchange, Hitler promises to give Satan his soul for his undivided possession in exactly 13 years. So, 1932 plus 13 - we get 1945.
Four Vatican experts examined the document and agreed that the Fuhrer's signature on the treaty was genuine, typical of documents he signed in the 1930s. But the most curious thing is different: Satan’s signature also coincides with that on other similar agreements with the ruler of hell. And there are many of them in various archives, especially church ones.
According to Vatican historians, the Fuhrer's agreement with the ruler of hell helps solve the mystery of how Schicklgruber managed to become the supreme ruler of Germany. Judge for yourself: until 1932, Hitler was simply a loser. He was expelled from high school, then he twice failed the exams at the Academy of Arts. He even spent time in prison. Everyone who knew him at that time considered him a good-for-nothing person. But since 1932, his fate changed dramatically. He literally soared to political Olympus and in January 1933 he already ruled Germany. According to Vatican experts, this can only be explained by an alliance with Satan. And on April 30, 1945 - exactly 13 years later - the Fuhrer committed suicide.
This is how the Prince of Darkness usually acts, says museum curator Father Ismaro Benidicti. Satan chooses a loser, tormented by ambition and a thirst for worldly pleasures, and promises to fulfill all his desires. The result of this conspiracy is a lot of trouble for those around him and a complete disaster for those who bought into his promises. Hitler's fate fits completely into this scheme.
Demon Flesh
Another interesting find, which later became an exhibit of the secret museum in the Vatican, is the flesh of a mummy, discovered on January 21, 1997. “According to archaeologists,” explains Father Stefan Mezzofanti, “this mummy, found under the ruins of an old church in the capital of Mexico, Mexico City, is not completely human. There is reason to believe that the preserved remains belonged to the real Demon himself!”
The structure of the mummy actually bears little resemblance to a normal person: the creature has clearly defined horns and fangs. Plus, there was a copper medallion hanging on the mummy’s neck. According to the museum's curators, this proves that Satan entered into a person with mutual consent.
“This is one of the most incredible scientific finds of our time,” said Professor I. Terranova upon completion of the examination of the remains.
We have received evidence that Satan really existed in the flesh."
Scientists do not know how the mummy, discovered in a simple stone sarcophagus under the altar, ended up in the Catholic Church of St. Anthony. Professor I. Terranova, upon completion of the examination of the remains, came to the conclusion that the age of the find was at least 600 years.
It is surprising that the mummy is so well preserved: many details of its appearance are clearly visible, for example long, almost feminine eyelashes. A study of the mummy's skull showed that the creature developed horns and fangs already in adulthood. “Everything points to sudden and painful physical changes,” says Professor Terranova. “We believe that this man initially led a completely normal life, but at about the age of 25, Satan entered his body.”
Now scientists are trying to read the inscription on the copper medallion hanging around the mummy's neck. According to the expert, there is an assumption that the medallion was some kind of occult object, with the help of which Satan possessed a volunteer or an unsuspecting victim.
The discovery in Mexico City was, however, not the first evidence that the Devil took human form. At the end of 1995, a horned mummy was discovered in Indian burials near White River (South Dakota, USA). The Indian Satan was less fortunate than the Mexican; he was tortured to death by warriors of the Sioux tribe.
According to the canons of Christianity, the Lord God has only one physical incarnation - Jesus of Nazareth, but Satan has appeared in the flesh hundreds of times in human history.
The remains discovered in South Dakota date back to the early 18th century, making them about 300 years old. “Our mummy is three hundred years older,” notes Terranova. “If the interval between bodily incarnations does not change, then the next appearance of Satan should be expected at the beginning of the third millennium.”
The Satan Museum, located in the Church of the Sacred Heart of the Martyr, is very rarely visited by clergy or high-profile tourists as its existence is kept secret.
Meanwhile, Satan himself not only roams the world, he intends to change the end of the world scenario planned by God. At least this is what is said in the texts of the tablets mentioned above.
Fallen Angel's Predictions
“These terrible prophecies have been kept under seal since 1566, when they were conveyed to the Vatican by a renounced Satanist,” said Dr. Paul Morrett of Washington. - And now, finally, they have seen the light. Satan's prophecies are generally consistent with those contained in the Bible, but with one important difference. In the Bible we find an indication that after a period of incredible turmoil, suffering and struggle, Good will ultimately prevail over Evil and lead to the establishment of the Kingdom of God on earth.
In the predictions of Satan, the opposite statement sounds. After a terrifying series of misfortunes and terrible epidemics, world wars and unprecedented terror, Evil will defeat Good, Satan will establish hell on earth and will rule in it forever.”
According to Vatican experts, there are only ten prophecies captured on the tablets, and five of them have already come true! This was precisely the reason for the Vatican's silence regarding the existence of the tablets until after 1999.
The other five predictions of the main villain were supposed to come true before the year 2000, but this did not happen. Such a drastic change in the course of events can hardly be explained by anything other than the victory of the Forces of Light, Vatican experts are sure.
But let us return to the predictions of the Evil One, imprinted on the plates kept in the Museum of Lucifer. “The prophecies include, among other things, Satan's plans to throw Christendom into complete disarray during the Crusades, which we all know actually happened,” says Dr Morrett. - They also contain references to the First and Second World Wars and the rise to power of the servants of the forces of evil - Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin.
Equally dramatic were predictions that the free world would collapse under the weight of an epidemic of drug addiction, unbridled sex and a general decline in morality.
Satan's prophecies also point to major changes in the appearance of the Earth itself, beginning with a series of unprecedented earthquakes and volcanic eruptions that, as geologists will tell you, began in the late 1980s. And all these horrors were confined to 1999-2000.”
Devil(from Church Slavonic devil, ancient Greek διάβολος - “ slanderer”) – one of the angels who fell away from God, even before God created the visible world. Subsequently - one of the names of the head of the dark forces.
The devil is a creature that God created good, kind, and light-bearing (the Greek word “Eosphoros” and the Latin “Lucifer” mean “light-bringer”). As a result of resistance to God, the divine will and divine Providence, the light-bearer fell away from God. Since the fall of the light-bearer and some of the angels from God, evil has appeared in the world. It was not created by God, but was introduced by the free will of the devil and demons.
At the dawn of the existence of created being, even before God created the visible world, but after the creation of angels, a grandiose catastrophe occurred in the spiritual world, which we know about only from its consequences. Some of the angels, having resisted God, fell away from Him and became hostile to everything that is good and holy. At the head of this fallen army stood Eosphorus, or Lucifer, whose very name (lit. “luminiferous”) shows that initially he was good, but then of his own free will “and by autocratic will he changed from the natural to the unnatural, and became proud against the one who created him.” God, wanted to resist Him, and the first, falling away from good, found himself in evil” (John of Damascus). Lucifer, who is also called the devil and Satan, belonged to one of the highest ranks of the angelic hierarchy. Together with him, other angels also fell away, which is allegorically narrated in the Apocalypse: “...And a great star fell from heaven, burning like a lamp... and... a third part of the stars was struck, so that a third part of them was eclipsed” (Apoc. 8:10, 12).
The devil and demons found themselves in darkness by their own free will. Every rational living being, be it an angel or a human, is endowed by God with free will, that is, the right to choose between good and evil. Free will is given to a living being so that, by practicing good, it can ontologically participate in this good, that is, so that good does not remain only something given from the outside, but becomes its own property. If good were imposed by God as a necessity and inevitability, not a single living creature could become a full-fledged free person. “No one ever became good under compulsion,” say the Holy Fathers. Through constant growth in goodness, the angels had to ascend to the fullness of perfection up to complete likeness to the super-good God. Some of them, however, made a choice not in favor of God, thereby predetermining both their fate and the fate of the Universe, which from that moment turned into an arena of confrontation between two polar (albeit unequal) principles: good, Divine and evil, demonic .
Demons do not know a person’s thoughts, but they certainly know the thoughts that they themselves inspired in that person. Again, they cannot know whether we accepted these thoughts or not, but they guess this from our actions. As for thoughts from God or some natural ones, they can guess about them from our behavior, but they cannot know them exactly.
A demon (or demon) cannot enter inside the human soul; only the Lord can penetrate there through supernatural Divine action. A demon can only live in a person’s body, taking possession to one degree or another of his mental or physical manifestations, i.e. either a possessed person occasionally experiences seizures, or completely loses control of himself.
A demon can enter a person’s body under the influence of witchcraft - unless, of course, the person resorts to God’s help, does not confess, receive communion, or pray. Or maybe there is some kind of permission from God, for admonition.
The only thing the devil is capable of is to give a person some sinful thought, for example, the thought of suicide. And he does this not because the inner world of a person, his heart, is open to him, but only focusing on external signs. Having instilled some thoughts in a person, the devil is not able to control what will happen to them next. And if a person knows how to distinguish which thought came from God, which from his own human nature, and which from the devil, and reject sinful thoughts at their very appearance, the devil will not be able to do anything. The devil becomes stronger as a sinful or passionate thought penetrates the human mind.
The Revelation of St. John the Theologian says: the final victory of Christ over the Antichrist, good over evil, God over the devil, will be won. In the Liturgy of Basil the Great, we hear that Christ descended into hell by the Cross in order to destroy the kingdom of the devil and bring all people to God, that is, with His presence and thanks to His death on the cross, He permeated with Himself everything that we subjectively perceive as the kingdom of the devil. And in the stichera dedicated to the Cross of Christ, we hear: “Lord, You have given us Your Cross as a weapon against the devil”; It also says that the Cross is “the glory of angels and the plague of demons,” this is an instrument before which demons tremble, and the devil “trembles and shakes.”
How the Devil Works
The devil persuaded man to himself through lies, deceived man, the forefathers accepted lies under the guise of truth. “Since that time, our nature, infected with the poison of evil, strives voluntarily and involuntarily towards evil, which appears to be good and pleasure to a distorted will, a perverted mind, a perverted feeling of the heart. Arbitrarily: because we still have a remnant of freedom in choosing good and evil. Involuntarily: because this remnant of freedom does not act as complete freedom; he operates under the inherent influence of the corruption of sin. We are born this way; we cannot help but be like this: and therefore all of us, without any exception, are in a state of self-delusion and demonic delusion.” The return of a person to God is extremely difficult, almost impossible, impossible from one’s own strength, due to the blocking of the path to Truth by “countless seductive false images of Truth.” The devil dresses up the demands of our passions in appearances, uses the harmful attractions of our fallen nature to keep us in his networks. One of the types of seduction, according to St. Ignatius, is that we consider ourselves eternal on this earth. God has given us the feeling of immortality, but we do not see that due to the fall, both our immortal soul and body are struck by death, we forget about the hour of death and the upcoming judgment.
However, the worst thing is that, due to the blindness with which we are born, we are happy with our condition, we are careless, we admire our blindness. “Despite my terrible sinfulness, I rarely see my sinfulness. Despite the fact that in me good is mixed with evil, and has become evil, just as fine food mixed with poison becomes poison, I forget the plight of the good that was given to me at creation, damaged, distorted during the fall. I begin to see my goodness in myself as whole, immaculate and to admire it: my vanity takes me from the fruitful and fat pasture of repentance to a distant country! to a rocky and barren land, to a land of thorns and weeds, to a land of lies, self-deception, and destruction.”
The sacrament of Baptism that we have accepted, according to St. Ignatius, of course, restores our communication with God, returns freedom, again bestows spiritual strength, and hence the Holy Spirit is co-present with a person throughout his entire life. We receive even more than the first-created man had in his immaculate state: in Baptism we put on the image of the God-man. But, along with the received power to reject passions, the freedom to submit to them again was also left, just as “in the sensual paradise it was left to the discretion of the first-created man either to obey the commandment of God or to disobey it.” Moreover, Baptism did not destroy the ability of fallen nature to give birth to evil mixed with good in order to test and strengthen our will in choosing the good of God. “At baptism,” says St. Ignatius, - Satan, who lives in every person of fallen nature, is expelled from man; It is left to the will of a baptized person to either remain the temple of God and be free from Satan, or remove God from himself and again become the dwelling place of Satan.” St. Ignatius compares the effect of Baptism to the grafting of a branch from a noble apple tree onto a wild apple tree. Branches should no longer be allowed to be born from the trunk of a wild apple tree; they should be born from a noble apple tree. Referring to St. Isaac the Syrian (Sl. 1, 84), St. Mark of the Ascetic (Sermon on Baptism), Xanthopoulov (chap. 4, 5, 7), St. Ignatius says that in Baptism Christ is planted in our hearts, like a seed in the ground, this gift in itself is perfect, but we either develop it or suppress it with our lives. The state of renewal received in Baptism “needs to be maintained by living according to the Gospel commandments.” It is necessary to prove your fidelity to Christ by preserving and increasing the gift received from Him. But, St. Ignatius quotes the words of St. John Chrysostom that we preserve the glory of Baptism for only one or two days, and then we extinguish it with the storm of worldly cares. Spiritual treasure is not taken away, but is hidden under the cover of our darkness; Christ remains in us even then, only we, by reviving our old man, have robbed Him of the opportunity to accomplish our salvation. “By doing evil after baptism, bringing activity to fallen nature, reviving it, a person loses more or less spiritual freedom: sin again gains violent power over a person; the devil again enters into man and becomes his ruler and leader.” Only, St. repeatedly notes. Ignatius, “the power of sin creeps into us unnoticed: unnoticed we lose spiritual freedom,” we do not see our captivity, we do not see our blindness precisely because of blindness. “Our state of captivity and slavery is revealed to us only when we begin to fulfill the Gospel commandments: then our mind rebels with bitterness against the mind of Christ, and our heart looks wildly and hostilely at the fulfillment of the will of Christ, as if at its own death and murder ; Then we will experience the sad loss of freedom, our terrible fall.”
But what was lost returns again in the sacrament of Repentance, “one who was born and then died can come to life through repentance.” Having entered into the struggle with sin within ourselves, in this subtlest invisible warfare with which mental activity is filled, having begun the work of repentance, which is “the consequence and effect of the grace implanted by Baptism,” we will again achieve revival for us, the active discovery of this mysterious thing given to us in baptism the gift of God’s grace, which consists “in the union of human nature with God’s nature and in the healing of the former by touching the latter.” And “if only God can change nature, then the awareness of the damage caused in nature by original sin, and the humble prayer for healing and renewal of nature by its Creator, is the strongest, most effective weapon in the fight against nature.” Whoever has felt the poverty of fallen nature, has really, with his very life realized the need for communion with Christ, he no longer hopes in himself, not in his blindness, not in his fallen strength, but only in Christ, for help from above, he rejects his own will, everything He sacrifices himself to God, strives for Him with all his mind, heart, and all his being, which is what fulfills the constant feat of mental activity.
Demons, demons
Demon- translation of the Greek word demon, which in Homer, Hesiod and others means something between gods and people, and in Plato it means the souls of dead good people. According to the beliefs of the ancients, such souls became patronizing geniuses who influenced personal well-being. Socrates often speaks of his “demon.” Among the Seventy, this word is used to reproduce the Hebrew words “gods” (Ps. 94:3), “devils” - shedim (Deut. 32:17), “infection” (Ps. 90:6 - “midday demon” - “ infection that devastates at noon"), etc. In Josephus it is always used of evil spirits. Demons, by his definition, are the souls of wicked people (“Jude. War”, VII, 6, 3). In the New Testament this term is used several times in general in the sense of pagan gods or idols (Acts 17:18; 1 Cor. 10:20), but usually about evil spirits or devils who, although they believe and tremble (James 2:19 ), recognize Jesus as the Son of God (Matthew 8:29), but are the servants of their prince - Beelzebub - Satan (Matthew 12:24). See below. Beelzebub, Devil, Satan.
Source: Orthodox Theological Encyclopedia
Evil forces in the Old Testament
There is evidence of the presence of demonic creatures in the world already in the book. Genesis, which describes the temptation of the first people by the serpent. However, ideas about evil forces are formed over a long period of time, including some elements borrowed from folk beliefs. When describing the actions of dark forces, “folklore is also used, which populates ruins and desert areas with a variety of vague presences, interspersed with wild animals: these are hairy satyrs (Is 13.21; 34.13 LXX), Lilith, the female demon of the nights (34.14 )… They are assigned cursed places, like Babylon (13) or the land of Edom (34). The rite of purification prescribes that a goat, on whom the sins of Israel are laid, should be handed over to the demon Azazel (Lev 16.10)” (Brunon J.-B., Grelot P. Demons // Leon-Dufour. Dictionary of Biblical Theology. Stb. 45). The development of Old Testament demonology, apparently, is indicated by the different readings of 1 Chronicles 21.1: “And Satan rose up against Israel, and stirred up David to number the Israelites,” where the author of the book attributes to Satan what is in the text of 2 Samuel 24.1: “ The wrath of the Lord again kindled against the Israelites, and it aroused David in them to say: “Go, number Israel and Judah” - is made dependent on the wrath of the Lord. This comparison of texts shows the direction in which Old Testament theological thought is developing in understanding the actions of malevolent forces. Initially, this thought tries to avoid an open opposition between the world of good (God) and the world of evil (Satan), so as not to give rise to dualism, to which the Israeli people were pushed by their pagan environment. Therefore, in some cases, Satan is depicted appearing before the Lord along with other angels, called “sons of God” in the Book of Job (Job 1.6); in others, his initial fall and self-deification are described using the image of the king of Tire: “Son of man! Weep for the king of Tire and tell him: Thus says the Lord God: you are the seal of perfection, the fullness of wisdom and the crown of beauty. You were in Eden, in the garden of God... you were an anointed cherub... you were perfect in your ways from the day you were created, until iniquity was found in you... you sinned, and I cast you down as unclean from the mountain of God, drove you out... Because of your beauty your heart was lifted up, because of your vanity you destroyed your wisdom; therefore I will cast you to the ground, I will put you in shame before kings” (Ezek 28:12-17). The repeated mention of evil forces in the Old Testament texts is also found in connection with the frequent temptation to appease demons with the help of magical rites and spells. In this case, evil forces actually turned into gods, since they were worshiped and sacrifices were made. For the Israelites these were “new” gods, “which they did not know” and “which came from their neighbors” (i.e., the pagans); The Bible directly calls such gods demons (Deut. 32.17). God sometimes allowed this temptation for the Israelites to test their love and loyalty to Him (Deut. 13:3). However, Israel often betrayed God by offering “sacrifices to demons” (Deut. 32:17). At the same time, betrayal sometimes turned into a monstrous crime, for “the Israelites sacrificed their sons and daughters as a sacrifice to demons” (Ps 105. 37-38). They also resorted to the help of dark forces in those cases when, following the example of the pagans, they engaged in divination, conspiracies, and sorcery. In 1 Samuel 28.3-25, the case of the Endor sorceress, who at the request of Saul summoned the spirit of the prophet, is described in detail. Samuel. The wicked queen Jezebel also practiced sorcery (2 Kings 9.22). King Manasseh “and told fortunes, and cast spells, and brought in callers of the dead and magicians” (2 Kings 21.6). Ahaziah “sent envoys to inquire of Beelzebub, the deity of Ekron” (2 Kings 1.2, 3, 16). All these are “abominations” (Deut. 18:12), from which God warns His people: “You shall not have a soothsayer, a fortune-teller, a soothsayer, a sorcerer, a charmer, a conjurer of spirits, a magician, or one who inquires of the dead” (Deut. 18.12). 10-11). All these servants of demonic forces only build illusions of their power; they are always overcome by the power of God. Joseph, thanks to the Spirit of God living in him, prevails over the soothsayers of Pharaoh (Gen. 41); Moses turns out to be stronger than Egypt. sorcerers (Ex 7-9); Daniel puts to shame the Chaldean “mysteries and diviners” (Dan 2; 4; 5; 14). Therefore, the demonic army is defeated not by magical spells, which the religion of Babylon resorted to, but by prayer to God, who can prohibit Satan from committing his evil actions (Zechariah 3.2), and to arch. Michael, who, together with his army, leads a constant battle with the demonic hordes (Dan 10.13; Tob 8.3).
In the OT there is not only voluntary submission and service to demonic forces. The latter could themselves attack a person and even possess him, as evidenced by the influence of the evil spirit on King Saul, from whom “the Spirit of the Lord departed” (1 Sam. 16.14; 18.10). The Book of Tobit (6.8) mentions the torment endured by people from evil forces, naming one of the Persian demons. named Asmodeus (3.8).
Demonology in the New Testament
It is revealed through the prism of the struggle and victory of Jesus Christ, and then Christians over the devil. This is why the Son of God became incarnate “to destroy the works of the devil” (1 John 3:8) and “in order by death to destroy him who had the power of death, that is, the devil” (Heb 2:14). The struggle of Christ with the prince of darkness begins with temptation in the desert, although reminiscent of the temptation of the first people, but incomparably stronger.
Temptation of Christ in the desert
The ancient serpent again follows the path of deception, hiding behind the texts of the Holy Scriptures. Scriptures, which he uses as arguments for his lies (Matt 4:1-11; Luke 4:1-13). Confounded by Jesus Christ, he leaves Him “for the time being” (Luke 4:13). However, the Savior’s struggle with Satan and his dark kingdom does not stop throughout His public ministry. The phenomenon that Christ had to encounter quite often is the demonization of people. The widespread spread of this disease at the turn of the OT and NT was not accidental: the coming of the Messiah occurred at a time when the spirit of the people was extremely weakened, and its moral strength was largely lost. According to Christ, the “unclean spirit” enters a person only when it finds the dwelling of his soul “unoccupied, swept and tidied up,” of course, not to meet God, but to instill dark forces into it. “Then (the unclean spirit - M.I.) goes and takes with him seven other spirits more evil than himself, and they enter and live there” (Matthew 12.43-45). The direct presence of evil forces in a person causes him great suffering (Luke 8:27-29), but the demonic influence in such cases does not become absolute. In all circumstances, God “commands the unclean spirits with authority, and they obey Him” (Mark 1:27). Not only Christ Himself, but also His disciples have the power to cast out demons (Mark 16.17; Luke 9.1; 10.17). Moreover, the possession of such power is not an exceptional talent: “...do not rejoice that the spirits obey you; but rejoice that your names are written in heaven” (Luke 10:20). In the Gospel parables, Christ describes, in addition to demonic possession, other ways in which demonic forces influence a person. The parable of the sower and the seed says that the seed of the gospel preaching does not always find favorable soil in the hearts of people. Sometimes this is prevented by the devil, who “takes away the word (of God - M.I.) from their hearts, so that they do not believe and are saved” (Luke 8:12). The parable of the wheat and the tares paints a picture of the world, which “lies in evil” (1 John 5:19), where good, the Source of which is God, lives next to evil, which the devil “sows” ( Matthew 13. 24-30, 37-39). Possession may turn out to be not only the result of a person’s immoral life, but also a way of his upbringing. Yes, app. Paul delivered the Corinthian incest “to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that the spirit might be saved” (1 Cor 5:1-5). Any devilish temptation can be educational in nature if it is perceived and tolerated properly. Ap. Paul writes about himself: “...so that I would not become exalted by the extraordinaryness of the revelations, a thorn was given to me in the flesh, an angel of Satan, to afflict me, so that I would not become exalted. Three times I prayed to the Lord to remove him from me. But the Lord said to me: “My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor 12:7-9). The actions of dark forces are usually accompanied by deceit and deception, because the devil “did not stand in the truth, for there is no truth in him; when he speaks a lie, he speaks his own way, for he is a liar and the father of lies” (John 8:44). Satan may even take “the form of an angel of light” (2 Cor 11:14), and the coming of the Antichrist “according to the working of Satan” will be accompanied by “all power and signs and lying wonders” and “all unrighteous deception” (2 Thess 2:9-10 ). “The idea of lying to the Holy Spirit” (Acts 5. 1-3) was also suggested to Ananias by the “father of lies,” and the betrayal of Judas took place after “the devil... put this criminal intention into his heart” (John 13. 2). Judas’s agreement to betray Christ became a truly satanic sin, so after this Satan freely enters the heart of the traitor (Luke 22:3). Jesus Christ directly calls Judas “the devil”: “...have I not chosen you twelve? But one of you is the devil” (John 6:70). In addressed to the ap. Peter's reproof: “Get behind me, Satan” (Matthew 16:23) - Christ, according to some interpreters, calls Satan not the apostle, but the devil, who continued to tempt Him and to whom Christ had already addressed the same words (Matthew 4:10). “He (Jesus Christ. - M.I.) looked for a moment through Peter and saw behind him His former enemy...” (Lopukhin. Explanatory Bible. T. 8. P. 281). The Jews, blinded by malice, attributed demon possession to John the Baptist (Mt 11:18; Lk 7:33) and even to Christ Himself (John 8:52; 10:20). However, a possessed person cannot heal the sick (John 10:21) or cast out demons (Matt 12:24-29; Luke 11:14-15). “If Satan casts out Satan, then he is divided with himself: how can his kingdom stand?” (Matthew 12.26; cf. Mark 3.23-27). Jesus Christ defeats the devil not “by the power of Beelzebub, the prince of demons” (Matthew 12:24), but “by the Spirit of God” (Matthew 12:28) - this means that the “strong one,” that is, the devil, is already “bound” ( Matthew 12:29), “condemned” (John 16:11) and “he will be cast out” (John 12:31). However, he does not stop the fierce struggle both with Christ (John 14:30) and with His followers. He asks the apostles to sow “like wheat” (Luke 22:31). “Like a roaring lion,” the devil “walks around... seeking someone to devour” (1 Peter 5:8); he has “the power of death” (Heb. 2:14); he will “throw Christians into prison” (Rev 2:10). Satan creates all sorts of obstacles for the apostles who carried out the work of the gospel gospel (1 Thess. 2. 18). Therefore, explains the ap. Paul, “we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places” (Eph 6:12). However, the “fiery arrows of the evil one” (Eph 6:16) should not bring fear to Christians. Dark spirits “tremble” before God (James 2:19); the violence they oppose to the power of God is in fact powerless. If a person shows submission to God and resists the devil, he will immediately “flee” from him (James 4:7).
Being spirits, dark forces are not limited by space, but prefer to be in the places they love. If the Old Testament texts refer primarily to pagan temples as such places, then the NT repeatedly speaks of demons invading people. At the same time, the spirits of darkness themselves sometimes forcibly drove the demon-possessed into lifeless and gloomy places, into deserts and tombs (Luke 8.29; Matt. 8.28). The request to send them to the herd of pigs, with which they turned to Jesus Christ (Matthew 8.31; Luke 8.32), can be explained by the fact that pigs, according to the Old Testament law, were unclean animals. The Revelation of John the Theologian reports that Babylon, for its debauchery, “became a habitation of demons and a haven for every unclean spirit” (18.2), and Pergamum, in which paganism flourished and a fierce struggle was waged against Christianity, became the city “where Satan lives ”, who set up his “throne” in it (2.13).
The activity with which Satan operates in different historical periods depends on how much God allows him to manifest his evil will. Having won the victory over Adam and Eve at the beginning of history (Gen. 3.1-7), the enemy of the human race turned into a “prince”, by whose will (Eph. 2.2) pl. people lived throughout the Old Testament period (Heb 2:15). They walked “in darkness” and lived “in the land of the shadow of death” (Is 9:2). Being slaves of the devil, they became “dead” because of their own sins and crimes (Eph 2:1-2). And only with the Incarnation did hope arise that “the prince of the world will be cast out” (John 12:31). Through his suffering, death and resurrection, Jesus Christ truly defeats the devil and acquires full power “in heaven and on earth” (Matt 28:18), and thanks to this victory “the prince of this world is condemned” (John 16:11) and is bound in his actions (Rev 20. 1-3). The thousand-year period for which the “ancient serpent” was “bound” (Rev. 20.2), interpreters define as the period from the Incarnation to the Second Coming of Christ (Aug. De civ. Dei. XX 8), when the devil no longer has his malice can manifest fully. After this period, he will be released “for a little time” (Rev 20:3) and will act not only as a tempter of individual people, but also as a seducer of the whole world. Then he will appear as “the angel of the abyss” (Rev. 9.11), as “the beast rising out of the abyss” (Rev. 11.7), and in the person of the Antichrist, in whom he will inhabit, he will manifest his destructive energy to the highest degree. However, he will not triumph for long; together with the Antichrist he will be thrown “into the lake of fire” (Rev 19:20). His fight against God will turn out to be so obvious that it will eliminate any need to be present at the Last Judgment to determine his further fate. The devil and the angels seduced by him, having rejected God, thereby rejected eternal life, replacing it with existence in death, which is nothing more than eternal torment (see articles Hell, Apokatastasis).
Demon nature and hierarchy
Lucifer's sin damaged only his nature. In its consequences, it was not similar to the original sin committed by Adam and Eve and which left its mark on the entire human race. The rest of the angels who sinned after Lucifer fell “through example, through the influence that one person can have on other individuals... Lucifer attracted other angels with him, but not all fell...” (Ibid. P. 252). The nature of the angels, who remained in goodness, did not undergo any changes due to the fall of demonic forces.
Possessing a spiritual nature, the dark forces, like the angels who remained faithful to God, apparently also have a certain physicality (see Art. Angelology), but they are not subject to the laws of physiology. The idea that angels can have sexual intercourse with people, inspired by an erroneous explanation of the text of Gen. 6. 1-4, is not recognized by the Church. Tob 6.15, where the demon appears to those who love Tobiah’s bride, does not say anything in their favor, for demonic love always appears “with a minus sign.” The incident with Tobiah's bride found an explanation in Christ. ascetic literature, which describes in detail the carnal warfare of the ascetic with the demons of fornication.
The dark forces represent the kingdom of evil, headed by the devil himself (cf. Lk 11.18), who carried away with him in his fall, according to the expression of St. John of Damascus, “an endless multitude of angels under his authority” (Ioan. Damasc. De fide orth. II 4). Some interpreters, considering Rev. 12. 3-4, 7-9, which says that “the great red dragon,” “the great dragon ... called the devil and Satan,” “carried away a third of the stars from heaven and cast them down on earth,” it is believed that the stars here symbolize angels who fell away from God along with the devil (Lopukhin. Explanatory Bible. Vol. 8. pp. 562-564). Despite the fact that the fall of the angels brought disharmony and disorder into the created world, the kingdom of evil itself represents a certain structure, which is based on a hierarchical principle. This is evidenced by the apostle. Paul, who called certain ranks of the devil's hierarchy “principalities”, “powers”, “rulers of the darkness of this world” (Eph 6:12; Col 2:15). Since some of these names are used by the apostle in relation to good angels (Eph 1.21; Col. 1.16), it is not entirely clear how the hierarchy of the fallen angelic world is structured. There are two assumptions, according to which the angels included in it either remained in the same rank in which they were before the fall, or their rank is determined by the intensity of their atrocities (Ioan. Cassian. Collat. VIII 8).
Source: Orthodox Encyclopedia
The Devil and the Origin of Sin
As an evil creature trying to harm man and lead him into sin, Satan clearly appears in the book of Genesis, which tells how he, having entered the serpent, tempted our first parents and finally persuaded them to break the commandment of God - to eat the fruits of the forbidden tree ( Gen. 3); further, the same evil creature is the devil in the book of Job (Job.1:6-12, 2:1-7). The book of Chronicles says that “Satan rose up against Israel and stirred up David to number the Israelites” (1 Chronicles 21:1). Here Satan appears to have aroused David to number the Israelites and thus drawn him into sin, which David himself confessed to God (1 Chronicles 21:8) and for which the Lord punished the Israeli people with a pestilence (1 Chronicles 21:14).
In the same way, in the New Testament there are clear indications that the devil leads man into sin. First of all, his very name is “tempter” (Matt. 4:3; 1 Thess. 3:5), that is, tempting a person to sin. Satan is a tempter even in relation to Jesus Christ (Matt. 4:1-11; Mark 1:12-13; Luke 4:1-13). In the desert, where Jesus Christ retired after baptism, Satan appeared to Him and began to deceive Him with all his tempting means, such as: “the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life” (1 John 2:16). But Jesus Christ provided decisive resistance to all the temptations of Satan, so that the latter had to withdraw from Him and realize his powerlessness to lead the Son of God into sin.
The influence of the devil on the origin of sin in the human race is clearly recognized by the Savior in His parable of the seed and the tares (Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43). “The kingdom of heaven,” he says, “is like a man who sowed good seed in his field. While the people were sleeping, the enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat and went away” (Matthew 13:24-25). “The field,” according to the Savior’s explanation, “is the world, the good seed is the sons of the Kingdom, and the tares are the sons of the evil one; the enemy who sowed them is the devil” (Matthew 13:38-39). Thus, evil in the world seems, according to the Savior, to have been sown or originated from the devil. According to the Gospel, Satan inspired Judas to betray Jesus to the chief priests and scribes (Luke 22:3; John 13:2, 27). The Apostle John also clearly recognizes the devil as the originator of sin when he says: “Whoever commits sin is of the devil, because the devil sinned first. For this reason the Son of God appeared, to destroy the works of the devil” (1 John 3:8). Here the sinful actions of man are directly called the works of the devil. This means that their origin is influenced by the devil; that is why they are called his works. In the words of the Apostle Peter, in which he warns Christians against the wiles of the devil, we also find an indication of the participation of the devil in the origin of sin. “Be sober and watchful,” says the apostle, “for your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour” (1 Peter 5:8). Here the devil appears as an adversary of man, trying to destroy him; and he destroys a person when he leads him into sin.
From the presented passages of the Old and New Testaments it is clearly seen that the devil influences the origin of sin in man.
What should be the attitude of a Christian towards the devil?
Today we see two extremes. On the one hand, among modern Christians there are many who do not believe in the reality of the devil at all, who do not believe in his ability to influence their lives. Some people think that the devil is a mythical creature in which world evil is personified. On the other hand, there are many people who attach an exaggerated importance to the devil, who are convinced that the devil influences all aspects of a person’s life, and see his presence everywhere. Such believers are constantly afraid that the forces of the devil will somehow affect them.
On this basis, there are many superstitions, from which even church people are not free. Many “folk remedies” have been invented that would prevent Satan from penetrating a person. For example, some people, when yawning, cross their mouth so that the devil does not enter through it. Others manage to cross their mouth three times in one yawn. I have heard conversations about how an angel sits on our right shoulder, and a demon on our left: making the sign of the cross, we cross ourselves from right to left, throwing the angel from the right shoulder to the left, so that he can fight the demon and defeat him (Accordingly, Catholics who cross themselves from left to right transfer the demon to the angel). This may seem funny and absurd to some, but there are people who believe in it. And, unfortunately, these are not jokes, but real conversations that can be heard in some monasteries, seminaries, and parishes. People who think this way live in the belief that their whole life is permeated by the devil’s presence. I once heard a hieromonk, a graduate of a theological academy, teach believers: when you get up in the morning, before you put your feet into your slippers, cross your slippers, because there is a demon in each of them. With such an attitude, the whole life turns into torture, because it is all permeated with fear, the constant fear that a person will be “spoiled”, jinxed, that evil spirits will be brought upon him, etc. All this has nothing in common with the Christian attitude towards the devil .
To understand what a truly Christian attitude towards the devil should be, we must turn, firstly, to our worship, to the sacraments, and, secondly, to the teaching of the Holy Fathers. The sacrament of Baptism begins with spells addressed to the devil: the meaning of these spells is to expel the devil nesting in the heart of a person. Then the newly baptized person, together with the priest and recipients, turns to the west. The priest asks: “Do you renounce Satan, and all his works, and all his army, and all his pride?” He answers three times: “I renounce.” The priest says: “Blow and spit on it.” This is a symbol that contains a very deep meaning. “Blow and spit on him” means “treat the devil with contempt, do not pay attention to him, he deserves nothing more.”
In patristic, and in particular monastic, literature, the attitude towards the devil and demons is characterized by calm fearlessness - sometimes even with a touch of humor. You can recall the story of Saint John of Novgorod, who saddled a demon and forced him to take him to Jerusalem. I also remember a story from the life of Anthony the Great. Travelers came to him after walking for a long time through the desert, and on the way their donkey died of thirst. They come to Anthony, and he says to them: “Why didn’t you save the donkey?” They ask in surprise: “Abba, how do you know?”, to which he calmly replies: “The demons told me.” All these stories reflect a truly Christian attitude towards the devil: on the one hand, we recognize that the devil is a real being, the bearer of evil, but, on the other hand, we understand that the devil acts only within the framework established by God and will never be able to transgress these boundaries; Moreover, a person can take control of the devil and control him.
In the prayers of the Church, in liturgical texts and in the works of the Holy Fathers, it is emphasized that the power of the devil is illusory. In the devil’s arsenal there are, of course, various means and methods with which he can influence a person, he has vast experience in all kinds of actions aimed at harming a person, but he can only use it if the person allows him to do so . It is important to remember that the devil cannot do anything to us unless we ourselves open an entrance for him - a door, a window, or at least a crack through which he will enter.
The devil is well aware of his weakness and powerlessness. He understands that he has no real power to influence people. That is why he tries to persuade them to cooperate and assist. Having found a weak point in a person, he tries to influence it in one way or another, and often he succeeds. First of all, the devil wants us to fear him, thinking that he has real power. And if a person falls for this bait, he becomes vulnerable and subject to “demonic shooting,” that is, those arrows that the devil and demons shoot into a person’s soul.
How to fight the devil
The Holy Fathers have a teaching about the gradual and step-by-step penetration of sinful thoughts into the human soul. You can become familiar with this teaching by reading the Philokalia or the Ladder of St. John of Sinai. The essence of this teaching is that a sinful or passionate thought initially appears only somewhere on the horizon of the human mind. And if a person, as the Fathers of the Church say, “stands guard over his mind,” he can reject this thought, “blow and spit” on it, and it will disappear. If a person becomes interested in a thought, begins to examine it, talk with it, it conquers more and more new territories in the person’s mind - until it embraces his entire nature - soul, heart, body - and induces him to commit sin. .
The path to the devil and demons to the soul and heart of a person is opened by various kinds of superstitions. I would like to emphasize: faith is the exact opposite of superstition. The Church has always waged a tough fight against superstitions, precisely because superstition is a surrogate, a substitute for true faith. A true believer realizes that there is God, but there are also dark forces; he builds his life intelligently and consciously, is not afraid of anything, placing all his hope in God. A superstitious person - out of weakness, or stupidity, or under the influence of some people or circumstances - replaces faith with a set of beliefs, signs, fears, which make up some kind of mosaic, which he takes for religious faith. We Christians must abhor superstitions in every possible way. We must treat every superstition with the same contempt with which we treat the devil: “Blow and spit on him.”
The devil’s entrance into a person’s soul also opens through sins. Of course we all sin. But sin is different. There are human weaknesses that we struggle with - what we call minor sins and try to overcome. But there are sins that, even if committed once, open the door through which the devil penetrates the human mind. Any conscious violation of the moral norms of Christianity can lead to this. If a person systematically violates, for example, the norms of married life, he loses spiritual vigilance, loses sobriety, chastity, that is, holistic wisdom that protects him from the attacks of the devil.
Moreover, any duality is dangerous. When a person, like Judas, begins, in addition to the basic value that forms the religious core of life, to cleave to other values, and his conscience, his mind and heart become divided, the person becomes very vulnerable to the actions of the devil.
I have already mentioned the so-called “reporting”. I would like to dwell in some detail on this phenomenon, which has deep historical roots. In the Ancient Church, as is known, there were exorcists - people whom the Church instructed to cast out demons from the possessed. The Church has never perceived demonic possession as a mental illness. We know from the Gospel many cases when a demon, several demons, or even a whole legion took up residence in a person, and the Lord, by His power, drove them out. Then the work of expelling demons was continued by the apostles, and later by the very exorcists to whom the Church entrusted this mission. In subsequent centuries, the ministry of exorcists as a special ministry within the Church practically disappeared, but still there were (and still are) people who are engaged in driving out demons from the possessed, either on behalf of the Church or on their own initiative.
You need to know that, on the one hand, the possessed are a reality that the Church encounters in everyday life. Indeed, there are people in whom a demon lives, which has penetrated into them, as a rule, through their fault - because in one way or another they have opened access for it inside themselves. And there are people who, through prayer and special spells, similar to those that the priest reads before performing the sacrament of Baptism, cast out demons. But there are many abuses based on “reporting”. For example, I saw two young hieromonks who, on their own initiative, were engaged in casting out demons from the possessed. Sometimes they provided this service to each other - one scolded the other for two hours. There was no visible benefit from this.
There are cases when priests arbitrarily take on the role of exorcists, begin to attract demoniacs and create entire communities around themselves. I have no doubt that there are clergy who possess divine healing powers and are truly capable of casting out demons from people. But such clergy must have the official sanction of the Church. If a person undertakes such a mission on his own initiative, this is fraught with great dangers.
Once, in a private conversation, one fairly well-known exorcist, an Orthodox clergyman, around whom crowds of people gather, admitted: “I don’t know how this happens.” He told one of the visitors: “If you are not sure that you are truly possessed, it is better not to come there, otherwise the demon can leave another person and enter you.” As we see, even this well-known and respected exorcist did not fully understand the processes that occur on the basis of “reading”, and did not fully understand the “mechanics” of expelling demons from one person and their entry into another.
Often people with certain problems - mental or simply in life - come to the priest and ask if they can go to such and such an elder for a lecture. A woman once turned to me: “My fifteen-year-old son doesn’t listen to me, I want to take him to school.” Just because your son is disobedient, I answered, does not mean that he has a demon. To some extent, disobedience is even natural for teenagers - through this they grow up and assert themselves. A lecture is not a panacea for life's difficulties.
It also happens that a person shows signs of mental illness, and loved ones see this as the influence of demons. Of course, a mentally ill person is more vulnerable to the action of demons than a spiritually and mentally healthy person, but this does not mean that he needs to be told off. A psychiatrist, not a priest, is needed to treat the mentally ill. But it is very important that the priest be able to distinguish between phenomena of a spiritual and mental order, so that he does not mistake mental illness for demonic possession. If he tries to heal mental defects by scolding, the result may be the opposite, exactly the opposite of what was expected. A person with an unbalanced psyche, finding himself in a situation where people are screaming, screaming, etc., can cause irreparable harm to his spiritual, mental and mental health.
In conclusion, I would like to say that the action, power and strength of the devil are temporary. For some time, the devil conquered from God a certain spiritual territory, a certain space in which he acts as if he were the master there. At the very least, he tries to create the illusion that there is an area in the spiritual world where he rules. Believers consider hell to be such a place, where people find themselves mired in sins, who have not repented, who have not taken the path of spiritual improvement, and who have not found God. On Holy Saturday we will hear wonderful and very deep words that “hell reigns, but does not reign forever over the human race,” and that Christ, by His redemptive feat, His death on the cross and descent into hell, has already won victory over the devil - the very victory that will become final after His Second Coming. And hell, and death, and evil continue to exist, as they existed before Christ, but they have already signed a death sentence, the devil knows that his days are numbered (I’m not talking about his days as a living being, but about the power that he temporarily disposes).
“Hell reigns, but does not reign over the human race forever.” This means that humanity will not always be in the position it is in now. And even those who find themselves in the kingdom of the devil, in hell, are not deprived of God’s love, because God is present in hell. The Monk Isaac the Syrian called the opinion that sinners in hell are deprived of God's love blasphemous. The love of God is present everywhere, but it acts in two ways: for those who are in the Kingdom of Heaven, it acts as a source of bliss, joy, inspiration, but for those who are in the kingdom of Satan, it is a scourge, a source of torment.
We must also remember what is said in the Revelation of St. John the Theologian: the final victory of Christ over the Antichrist, good over evil, God over the devil, will be won. In the Liturgy of Basil the Great, we hear that Christ descended into hell by the Cross in order to destroy the kingdom of the devil and bring all people to God, that is, with His presence and thanks to His death on the cross, He permeated with Himself everything that we subjectively perceive as the kingdom of the devil. And in the stichera dedicated to the Cross of Christ, we hear: “Lord, You have given us Your Cross as a weapon against the devil”; It also says that the Cross is “the glory of angels and the plague of demons,” this is an instrument before which demons tremble, and the devil “trembles and shakes.”
Movies about the devil and demons:
Angels and Demons. The Law of God with Archpriest Andrei Tkachev
The book “Angels and Demons. Secrets of the spiritual world"
What sins should you avoid most?
From atana. What images does this word conjure up in your mind? An evil creature with horns, a tail and a pitchfork? A cute baby in a red hood on your doorstep on Halloween? Cultural caricatures aside, Satan is a concrete and real being known to Christians as the great liar and deceiver, the sworn enemy of God and His people. Scripture says a lot about his character and actions - who he is and what he does - but what about his origins? Where did he come from? Who created the devil?
Chatty snake
The Bible opens with the story of creation, when God announced the beginning of the universe. The first two chapters present breathtaking pictures of order, wholeness and prosperity. It is not surprising that the Creator, having surveyed what He had created, declared that it was all “very good” (Gen. 1:31).
And suddenly, unexpectedly, a snake appears. But this is not just an ordinary snake: he talks, and I must say that he is very talkative. Very quickly this writhing creature begins a conversation with Eve, seducing her and her silent husband - and you and me - into rebellion against God. As the story progresses, it becomes clear that this ancient serpent is the embodiment of Satan himself (Rev. 12:9).
Origin of the Devil
The Bible does not explicitly and clearly describe the origin of Satan. Presumably, he began to exist some time after God created the perfect world (Gen. 1:31) and before his appearance in the Garden of Eden in the form of a serpent (Gen. 3:1). Despite everything we don't know, we can say with some certainty at least the following five things.
1. God created him.
Scripture states that everything was created by God and for God (Rom. 11:36; 1 Cor. 8:6; Col. 1:16-17). It naturally follows that the all-encompassing category of “everything” even includes the devil. After all, if God is not “behind” the creation of Satan, then who is? Some other powerful being? If so, then This a being must control at least one realm of existence. And then this sphere cannot be completely subject to God and be under His control.
2. God created him good and good.
As the source of all goodness, beauty and truth, God creates only that which corresponds to His nature - things that are in themselves good, beautiful and true. Every aspect of creation, whether in heaven or on earth, was originally “very good.” Paul puts it simply: "Every creation of God is good"(1 Tim. 4:4). The character of God is perfect purity, there is not even a particle of darkness or deception in Him (1 John 1:5; James 1:13). And Satan was created as an angel to serve and glorify this great God.
Obviously something went wrong.
3. Some of God's created angels rebelled against Him.
There are two places in the New Testament that speak of a time when angels rebelled against God and fell into evil and darkness:
God did not spare the angels who sinned, but, having bound them in the bonds of hellish darkness, he handed them over to be judged for punishment. (2 Peter 2:4)
The angels who did not retain their dignity, but left their home, are kept in eternal bonds, under darkness, for the judgment of the great day. (Jude 1:6)
According to Scripture, one day there was a rebellion of angels against the King of Heaven.
4. Satan has power in the realm of demons.
As the “prince of demons,” it was most likely Satan who initiated and led this heavenly rebellion (Matt. 12:24). And then, Satan is the first sinner, “because first the devil sinned”(1 John 3:8).
Why does God allow evil? Where did the devil come from?
- QUESTION FROM ELENA
Why didn’t God create man as ideally good, without bad qualities - envy, anger, resentment, arrogance, lies? After all, if a person consisted only of a good soul and did not have any inherent bad and evil in him, there would not be so many misfortunes and suffering, starting from misfortunes in the family - for example, a mother throws her children out of a window or a son kills his parents - and ending with global wars . Why did God make it so that man can cause evil and can deviate from divine commandments? Just let's try to do without the influence of the prince of darkness, taking as a basis the postulate about the divine origin of everything that is and is not.
According to the Bible, nothing can exist unless God gives it existence. “Through Him all things were made, and without Him nothing was made that was made.”(John 1:3). “Everything is from Him, By Him and to Him”(Rom. 11:36). “For by it we live and move and have our being”(Acts 17:28). In other parts of the Bible (primarily in the Psalms) this idea appears many times. However, God is not the creator of evil and does not support its existence. In this sense, evil does not exist. What we call evil does not exist in itself, but as a distortion of God’s plan, as a belittlement, degradation of what He created.
According to the Bible, the source of evil is the Devil. The Apostle John writes: “First the Devil sinned”(1 John 3:8). Having desired to be equal to God, he from a beautiful being (Lucifer, the Light-Bearer, see the books of the prophets Ezekiel 28:11-19, Isaiah 14:12-14) turned into an opponent of God (in Hebrew - Satan) and a liar (in Greek - Devil). The devil helped Adam and Eve also doubt God and want to determine for themselves what will be good and what will be evil (Genesis 3). “Only this I found that God created man upright, and people indulged in many thoughts"(Eccl. 7:29). In this desire to take the place of God, in the desire to separate from Him - the source of all good - is the cause of evil, i.e. inferiority of man and the world.
Just as a flower withers and withers without the sun, so everything created by God cannot be good and kind without Him. One of the reasons for the degradation of our human nature is that each of us, in the person of Adam and Eve, abused our God-given freedom and turned away from our Creator. Just as unclean water flows from a dirty source, so we inherit a nature distorted by sin from our parents and pass it on to our children. But thanks to God, we have a desire for good and hatred for evil. And with the help of the Holy Spirit we must develop this desire for good and liberation from sin in ourselves. In the person of Jesus Christ, every person is already a winner in this fight against evil (Rom 5:12-19). Questions arise: why does the all-powerful and all-good God allow evil? (More specific questions: Why did a beautiful and kind angel turn into the Devil? Why are the descendants of Adam and Eve born physically and spiritually sick, prone to evil?) This is one of the central problems raised in the Word of God. In theological and philosophical literature it is called theodicy (justification of God). But even when answering this question, the authors of the Holy Scriptures fall silent, as if calling us ourselves, through our own experience, to determine whether God is right! Based on the Bible, the problem of theodicy is solved approximately as follows. The all-powerful and all-good God allowed the existence of evil so that rational beings would be convinced who was right, Christ or Satan, and
If God explicitly punished manifestations of moral evil and suppressed manifestations of natural evil, then people would bow to Him Who is Truth, Life, Love out of fear of His punishment and the desire to receive protection from Him, and not because of sincere love to him. In this case, a person’s free, selfless acceptance of good would be difficult. (These conclusions can be drawn from the Book of Job.) And we would misunderstand God Himself, His character, and therefore we could not enter into a close relationship with Him, or live truly happily.
According to J. Young, "The Bible does not give us a theoretical answer to the question: 'Why does God allow suffering?' Instead, we find God there, suffering with us and atoning for our sin through the Crucifixion” (Young. J. Christianity. M., 1998. P. 44). Thus, the problem of evil in Christianity is solved, first of all, thanks to the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. To destroy sin and its consequences, but to have mercy on sinners, the Son of God becomes Man. The God-man lives a sinless life, showing the love of the Father to the whole world, but the innocent is sentenced to a shameful death. On the Cross, Christ takes the punishment intended by God for all the evil committed by people on Himself. Therefore, anyone who accepts His substitutionary sacrifice receives forgiveness from God and strength to forsake sin and prepare for eternal life.
The suffering of God shows how much He hates evil and how much He loves people. How God values man! How dear we are to Him! In order to communicate with us in eternity, He voluntarily went to the torment of the Cross. In the powerlessness of Christ on the Cross, the power and love of God are revealed. They find their manifestation in those who, following the example of Christ, fight evil in their lives and bring good to others.
Igor Muravyov
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