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Demons
As I mentioned earlier
the faith teachers maintain that when Adam sinned
the world was turned over to
Satan. The devil became the legal owner of the planet. The faith teacher's
position accommodates the Gnostic view (particularly evident in Zoroastrianism
a Persian Gnostic religion)
in which a good god rules the spiritual world and
a bad god rules the physical realm. In such a philosophy the problem of evil is
solved by blaming everything that goes wrong on the bad god (the devil); the
good god is seen as no more than a counterbalance. One is left with the
impression that the two gods each possess equal power both in quality and
quantity. Everything that is wrong in the world is the fault of the bad god.
And it's up to the initiate or believer to make sure the good god wins. When
Jimmy Swaggart defied the orders of the Assemblies of God to refrain from
preaching for one year
he assured the public that he was free of moral defect
for
he said
Oral Roberts had cast out the demons from his body over the
phone. Oral Roberts confirmed Swaggart's report
insisting he had demons and
their their claws deeply embedded in Swaggart's flesh. Now that the rascals
were gone
Swaggart and Roberts asserted
Swaggart could get on with preparing
the way for Christ's return. Evidently
personal responsibility for sin can be
dismissed by blaming it on an external force. Yet Flip Wilson's famous quip
"The devil made me do it" is hardly comedy when we're talking about
the biblical view of sin.
For these metaphysical
evangelists
even personal sins can be attributed to the bad god
since he is
after all
sovereign over this earthly realm as the good god is relatively in
charge of the spiritual domain. Here again
then
is the echo of the Gnostics of
old. When that heresy was revived toward the end of the medieval period
Calvin
said
"They made the devil almost the equal of God." In this way
the
problem of sin is replaced with the problem of Satan. It is facing Satan
not
my own sin and rebelliousness
that becomes the great task of the Christian
life. I'm not the problem -- the Devil is!
The Agony of Deceit by Michael
Horton
Editor 1990
Moody Press
pp. 132-133.