Ever see a movie SO BAD that you just kept thinking of new things that are wrong with it long after you saw it? Well, as a former Christian, Christianity is like that for me. I rejected it years ago and yet I still think of new problems with it to this day. This is one such problem that just hit me as I was walking down the street to get an eggplant parmesan sandwich:
We know the Devil knows Scriptures. He proves that in Matthew 4:6. And he is always understood to have so much intelligence that he uses for evil. And that evil will end when Jesus returns and he is cast into a lake of fire, as the Bible teaches us in Revelation…
But hold on: if the Devil knows the Bible, then doesn’t he know how his whole plan to send Junior (the antichrist) to Earth and call himself head honcho of humanity will not end well for him? Wouldn’t he read the book and say “wow, so stamping 666 to people’s foreheads and bringing plague and war and the rest isn’t gonna work out. I should adjust my plans accordingly.”
I mean, according to Christian theology, the Devil has the brains, the free-will and the drive to win. Wouldn’t he therefore go a completely different route then what is depicted in Revelation, considering he read the spoiler about 2,000 years ago?
And I know I have to say this: yes, I know the Bible is BS for a bunch of other reasons. It has some moral truths, beautiful poetry and mythology and great cultural resonance, yes. But it’s mostly BS. But even though we know a movie is fiction, we can still debate its merits and flaws.
And this plot hole is an even bigger one than Doctor Strange not cutting Thanos’s hand off with a little portal when he had the chance in “Infinity War.”
Totally agree with your assessment, and I think another plot hole is if heaven was so great, why did the devil want out? Sounds awful sketchy to me.
Yes, this is an interesting point and it goes to demonstrate the following possibility for Scripture: References to Satan and the Devil and Lucifer, etc. can be better understood not as an actual person or independent being/player but as the embodiment of the lower nature of Man.
By lower nature I mean all that we draw on, as smart animals, that leads us to excess in the pursuit of worldly pleasures, wealth and undue influence, greed,, materialism, hubris, arrogance.
On the other hand, the higher nature of Man would be the part that Genesis means when it states that Man was created “in the image and likeness of God”. This is not to say that God has two arms, two legs and a head of hair (and beard!). Rather it refers to the divine attributes that are latent within us but need to be brought to the surface, like mercy, justice, wisdom, tact, forbearance, detachment, empathy, trustworthiness, etc.
It also make sense that it is that same lower Nature of Man is what bring the higher nature to the surface, right?
In this context you can go all the way back through the various Biblical stories and see how the serpent/devil, etc. makes appearances to “tempt” Man’s – even Christ’s – lower human nature, and even triggering the trials of Job – all for the purpose of making that lower/higher nature dichotomy very real and actionable.
It’s not that we can ignore the lower nature of Man, it is just that both the lower and the higher nature must be strong. It like the like a horse (lower nature) and a rider (higher nature). The horse very ably serves the rider, but the rider must always be in charge.
This new perspective on the role of “The Evil One” is a central theme in the writings of the Baha’i Faith and those same writings actually use that term and then immediately remind you that this is nothing but a symbol for Man’s lower nature, not an outside player upon whom you can lay blame or before whom you might tremble in fear and helplessness.
You are making 3 foolish assumptions in the frame of this argument. The assumptions are this:
ASSUMPTION 1
-God and the devil are equal in power. They are not. We have seen how many times demons and even Satan himself bend knee before God and even have to ask for permission to do stuff. Imagine being so absolute that your enemy asks your permission to act against you. Don’t you find it funny that God doesn’t personally bother with Satan. It’s his angels and his son that do. God is so beyond Satan that acting against him would be so unfair as to be probably counterproductive and prove him a tyrant.
ASSUMPTION 2
– Satan has any hope of winning against GOD. There is a scary verse in the Bible that is often not interpreted. John 5:26. Just as the Father has life in himself so he gave the son so that he may have life in himself. The scary undertone of this.-The life of everyone else, is not in themselves. Someone else is giving them life. And that someone can take it. If you can’t fight someone because they are too powerful and you can’t kill them because they have life in themselves and they can take your life back to themselves at any time, and your fate of death has already been sealed no matter what you do and you are very very very proud and will not go down without a fight to the end what do you do. How do you fight God. Answer you can’t. You spite him. You die doing the maximum damage possible.
ASSUMPTION 3
Prophecy is a free for all and the Devil has a say in what happens. God is not an oracle. Prophecy happens because God MAKES it happen. When you have absolute power your promises are indistinguishable from prophecy. They are one and the same. Add that to the idea that even your detractors have to come ask you for permission and you get the jist of what it means to be absolute. To be God.
Isiah 46:10-.. I declare the end from the beginning, and ancient times from what is still to come. I say, ‘My purpose will stand, and all My good pleasure I will accomplish
You can’t fight God. The notion is so stupid that God himself even makes a point to abstain from such. The devil is dealt with by Michael, Jesus, and the powerful angels that imprison him and throw him in the lake of fire. In all his rebellion and pride, the devil remains a servant/subject to God. A rebellious one but 100% under his command. You can’t fight someone on whom your own existence depends
I don’t believe the Bible is inerrant, but I don’t think you understand Satan. He either really thinks he can win or he wants to take as many people as possible down with him to hurt God.
I once asked a man who dabbled in Satanism why Satan acts the way he does since his fate is prophesied. He replied, “Both sides can predict victory, but only one will win.” Research “open theism.” It has a lot of Scriptural backing. It says that God knows the past and present as absolutes but the future as a realm of possibilities.
i mean. his son made some demons go inside pigs. i mean if you are the devil would you really want to clash with a supreme being? even a mere human being was given authority to expel them. do you really want to piss off a person that can just replace you with another one? or would you just drag as many as you can and take the win?
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I don’t think this is a problem- a perfect predictor will take “you know what the perfect predictor predicted and are trying to do something different” into their prediction.
Or to put it another way, stamping 666 into people’s forehead and so forth is what satan will do, *taking into account* Satan knowing that’s what’s prophesied and trying to escape that prophecy.
You can try and change all your plans all you like, but it doesn’t matter. A perfect predictor will , of course, have predicted that you’ll do that and how, and update the prophecy accordingly.
Why not just disregard the Bible the same way you stopped believing Christianity?
I’d advice against treating religious texts as if they’re movies attempting to construct a single hole-less plot. They don’t function like that, just like a book of poetry or a music video don’t function like that; they are all different artistic mediums and you engage with them in different ways.
And honestly I’d advice against treating movies universally that way to. Plenty of movies aren’t attempting to create that kind of plotline where every scene rationally follows from the previous one to create a very straightforward and easily explained storyline. If you wanna go digging for plotholes in Transformers or James Bond or whatever, go ahead if that brings you joy, just don’t try to watch Fire Walk With Me or Brazil or Paprika that way. On the other hand, *do* watch Primer that way, I highly recommend it; watching that mind fuck of a movie with a mind to plotholes seems like it’d be a great and terrible time.
From my understanding, God is the one who knows when the end times are. The end times will begin when God starts them. They are not begun by satan. The actions that satan takes are likely the ‘best’ that he can do in those times.
>I mean, according to Christian theology, the Devil has the brains, the free-will and the drive to win. Wouldn’t he therefore go a completely different route then what is depicted in Revelation, considering he read the spoiler about 2,000 years ago?
This assumes the devil is wise enough to not let his pride get in the way of reason, but seeing as how it was pride that made him fall, and arguably pride that keeps him in his current state – it’ll be his own pride that leads to his final destruction as in Revelations.
Like many people on this sub who think God not worthy of worship, the Devil would rather reign in hell than serve in heaven, even though he knows it won’t end well for him.