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TOPIC: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks About the Tempter (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 012. Going to the Original Sources
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Going to the Original Sources
Let any one who would know the teaching of the Bible take a rapid but careful run through its pages, noting every reference to the enemy. Take sheets of blank paper and note down in regular order every text, writing out just enough of the words to bring to your mind at once what the passage contains. Leave a wide margin at the right hand side of the sheet for any notes you may want to make.
A good concordance will help much. Though the habit of wide continual reading of the Bible by the page is the real basis of all such research, and makes it easy, and makes it strangely fascinating too, and even more—makes your conclusions much more reliable because each passage is gotten in its setting. And the setting really gives the meaning of the words themselves. Trace out and put down every place referring to the names and titles of Satan, to demons and the devil. It is really not nearly as laborious a task as it sounds. And there is a real fascination about it.
Such a simple gathering together and grouping up of the actual statements of this blessed Word of God will not only radically change one's belief regarding this cunning enemy of ours, but it will do more. It will affect our lives, and consecration, and surrender, if we are indeed determined to be true to our Lord. It will affect our praying, it will make us do more claiming in our praying, more taking of definite things. Aye, it will do yet more; if we are determined to follow our Lord fully there will come to us a new inner consciousness of something, or somebody, who is resisting us, is trying to turn us aside, or trip us up.
And if we are courageous enough to keep steadily on, we will find the meaning of such a verse as, "Greater is He that is in you than he that is in the world." (1Jn_4:4.) The commentary of actual experience will flood that statement with a light that cannot be gotten in any book. You will be convinced down into the very roots of your being of this: that the "world" one is great, terrifically great; much too great for you to deal with alone.
But, greater, aye, greater is the other One. No dictionary definition can make anything like a satisfactory meaning of that word "greater." Those two words, "great," "greater," will stand out with a strange sharpness to your eyes. "Great"—that's the enemy; how great only he knows who resists. But—ah, that is a blessed "but"; all the gospel is in that "but"; all the power of a perfectly obedient Nazareth life, a sacrificial Calvary death, and a triumphant resurrection morning, are in that "but" But "greater" is He—the Victor. The intensity of your fight becomes the new underscoring of that word "greater." The only satisfactory way of spelling that word that will at all satisfy your heart is to spell it with a J and an E, and then S-U-S—Great!—Greater!!
But now for that brief biographical sketch. There are seven chapters in it. But each can be made simple and brief that the whole may easily be held in mind together.
The first chapter tells of Satan's original state before he became Satan. That name belongs to a later stage, after his character had changed. Originally, as created by God in His great love, this prince was a being of rare personal beauty, of great wisdom, with mighty power, and high dignity of position. The teaching of the Bible here is chiefly inferential, but so clear as to leave no doubt as to the facts which the Holy Spirit is bringing to us through these pages.
Jesus' words: "I beheld Satan fallen as lightning from heaven," (Luk_10:18.) give a world of clear inferential light on this first stage of Satan's career. Weymouth's translation, in the footnote, gives "a rendering less brief but more exact," in these words, "I was looking on when Satan was hurled like a lightning flash out of heaven." Taken with other scriptures this points clearly to Satan's early glorious history.