Bible Question:
PART I Dear BradK, (As the opposite of a P.S. note, I would like to mention that this answer has become a little longer than I had originally envisaged. I hope that you will approach it with an open mind and take it in the spirit with which it is intended – that Grace and Truth may abound. If I gain nothing else from this, it has been a useful study for myself, but as I say, I hope and pray it may help and encourage others to search out the things of Truth.) Thanks for your reply. I certainly believe in the Lord Jesus, but I have tremendous problems believing in a physical Satan, and your references are actually part of the problem with belief in a physical Satan, and not part of the solution. For example, Ezekiel 28. (Taken as a case study. As you can see a complete answer to all your points would take a very long time.) Ezekiel 28 is clearly a prophesy against Tyre, just as the previous chapters 26 and 27 are also prophesies against Tyre. If this is not true then you would have to accept that chapters 26 and 27 are also about Satan, which would indicate that: 1. Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon would fight against Satan and destroy him. (Ezekiel 26:7 onwards) 2. Satan will become a place for the spreading of nets in the midst of the sea. (Ezekiel 26:5) 3. Satan is in fact situated by the seaside. (Ezekiel 27:3) 4. Satan has ships made from the fir trees of Senir and the cedars of Lebanon. (Ezekiel 27:5) 5. The fact that Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon fought against Tyre, and that Alexander the Great scraped the dust from Tyre and made her like the top of a rock in direct fulfilment of this prophesy is all just a coincidence. There are obviously an abundance of examples such as these in chapters 26 and 27, and without covering all of them, I hope we can agree at least that these chapters concern literal Tyre. If chapters 26 and 27 concern literal Tyre, and the end of chapter 28 concerns literal Sidon (a city to the north of Tyre) it would seem out of place to include a pronouncement against the person of Satan in the middle of these prophecies against cities, especially when verses 2 and 12 of Ezekiel 28 explicitly state that the pronouncement is against Tyre. ------------------------------------- To answer specifically your points about Ezekiel 28: 1. He was in Eden. (Ezekiel 28:13). This appears to be a prosaic device, or for want of a better definition, a metaphor. There is clear evidence that Ezekiel uses this device elsewhere – in fact in chapter 31 Ezekiel describes Assyria as a tree in the Garden of Eden. Unless Assyria WAS in fact a literal tree in the Garden of Eden, and was somehow later transmogrified into a nation or person, this argument does not stand. It is more probable that Ezekiel is here comparing the fall of Tyre to the fall of Adam in Eden. This is borne out in verse 15: Ezekiel 28:15 "Thou wast perfect in thy ways from the day that thou wast created, till iniquity was found in thee." This verse exactly fits the fall of Adam, which is a historical event already recorded in The Bible, unlike the fall of Satan. If a verse in the Bible refers us to another part of Scripture, surely we must analyse this before we introduce an extra-Biblical conception. In other words, we must extrapolate Scriptural teachings from Scripture, not interpolate extra-Biblical teachings into Scripture. And you cannot back-up your argument that Ezekiel 28 refers to the fall of Satan by presenting Ezekiel 28 as corroborating evidence. If your best source of evidence for the fall of Satan is Ezekiel 28, and the only way you know it is the fall of Satan is "because it sounds like the fall of Satan" then yours is a circular argument. If we are told that this person was in the Garden of Eden and was perfect until iniquity was found in him, then the only logical step is to see who The Bible (not man) says was in Eden and was perfect until iniquity was found in him. There is only one candidate – Adam. This must therefore be a comparison between the fall of Tyre and the fall of Adam. In fact, the comparison between Adam and the king of Tyre runs throughout Ezekiel 28: Ezekiel 28:2 "thou art a man, and not God, though thou set thine heart as the heart of God". Genesis 3:5 "For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods" According to The Bible, this was the sin of Adam – that he set his heart as the heart of God. That he believed that he could become "as God". Note that this is NOT the sin of the serpent, at least not according to The Bible account. |
Bible Answer: removed for brevity. Please click on question to read in entirety. |
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Questions and/or Subjects for Bible general Archive 3 | Author | ||
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Happysonshine | ||
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Happysonshine | ||
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drbloor | ||
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mark d seyler | ||
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drbloor | ||
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drbloor | ||
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DocI333 | ||
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drbloor | ||
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drbloor | ||
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drbloor | ||
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brother joe |