This week I came across a striking contrast in approaches to determining what the Bible says about Satan. This morning, Ken explained that much of what we assume we know about Satan from the Scriptures is quite speculative. The eye-opener for me was that the connection between “Lucifer” in Isaiah 14 and Satan is not clear cut.
Contrast that with this YouTube video clip that has sadly become popular, using speculation upon extrapolation (and a few outright misstatements) to show that Jesus warned in Luke 10:18 that President Obama is the Antichrist. I commend to you this excellent response by New Testament Scholar Dan Wallace.
I found it interesting to juxtapose two uses of the same passage in ways that could not be more more different. In Ken’s approach we see a great example of challenging our assumptions and letting the Bible speak. In the popular Internet video we see someone abusing the Scriptures to bend them to his suit his personal agenda.
Good stuff.
I think its extremely important to make sure that our beliefs about all things associated with the spirit realm, heaven, hell, angels, demons, etc. are based soley on what scripture tells us about them.
There’s a whole lot of speculation (that often passes for fact) out there about all these topics as a result of letting our curiosity about such things take us beyond the bounds of scripture.