DEVIL—SATAN—SERPENT—DRAGON

“And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels, and prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven. And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.”—Revelation xii. 7-9.

Names were significant in Bible times; they are given to-day at random, but then names were indicative of character. When character changed, the name changed: Jacob to Israel; Saul to Paul, etc. While the subject of these pages remained the holy, shining light bearer of heaven, he was Lucifer, but that name was lost to him forever. So varied were his passions, characteristics, and powers that must be known by appropriate names, and each, as given, designates some phase of his multiform personality.

Devil. Not only did Lucifer lose name and character; he exchanged a brilliant, glorious external appearance (to eyes that penetrate the invisible) for one ugly, loathsome, beastly. If language can be interpreted literally, the eye of inspiration and revelation sees him a Devil—sair in the Hebrew, “hairy one,” “he goat,” etc. The he goat, in the Bible, stands for all that is low and base. Those who partake of the sair nature, in the Last Day, are called goats. He divided the sheep from the goats. God teaches us spiritual lessons in all nature, especially by the animal kingdom, and as the goat is a synonym for the lowest instincts of the animal; we find a being created in the highest realm of spiritual life sinking to the lowest level of brute life. If no further delineation were given—no other name than Devil—the fall was from one extreme to the other.

This cognomen carried further has a second meaning: spoiler, one whose touch soils and besmirches, rearranges; bright spots are smeared with black soot; flowers with sweet odour, after his blight passes over them, send out a stench; hearts of purity are defiled and debauched; faces of beauty become marred and ugly. Whenever and wherever it serves his purpose, cosmos becomes chaos. He is a spoiler.

Satan. In this familiar title we see him in the character rÔle which dominates all his actions. As Satan he is the hater. Of all the evil passions of the soul, hate is the most terrible. As manifested in human relationships, the hater is a murderer. Somehow hate seems to be a resultant of wrath, malice, envy, jealousy, and revenge. Hatred in the bosom of the weak or cowardly affects only its possessor; but hatred burning in the soul of one who is strong and courageous, nothing belonging to the object of his hatred is secure: life, personal property, or reputation.

We want carefully to note the full significance of hatred; then place beside it the one who hates—yes, as no other being in all the universe can hate. He is the father of haters; the tragedies of all kinds, filling the world with terror, because of murders, bomb explosions, incendiaries, poisonings, are but the scattered rays reflected and deflected from this full orb of hate as he revolves in his sphere of darkness.Satan hates God, hates the Holy Ghost, but the full force of his hate, of necessity, is directed towards the Son of God, his rival for place and power. The supreme work of the Son was the Atonement; now, the interest and anxiety of heaven has been transferred to this planet. The supreme triumph of the Second Person of the Trinity was accomplished on the Cross where He paid the price of human redemption. His energies are now directed to the breaking down of all that was accomplished on the Cross. Every movement, every motive, every virtue, coming directly or indirectly from the merits of the Atonement, become at once the object of satanic hatred. Therefore every inch of territory conquered by the gospel propaganda was and is a victory over his hateful protest.

Serpent. At the very suggestion of this title our nature recoils. The “nachash,” and “zachal,” mean “fearful”—“creeper,” therefore a fearful creeper. The snake is the most repulsive and dangerous of all reptiles. There is a strange antipathy about a snake; his nature is so still, so sneaking, so oily; the appearance of one produces an involuntary shudder. Who has not felt the disgust at seeing men and women—“charmers”—take a number of the sleek, slimy monsters from a cage, and wind them around arms, neck, and body? The horror felt towards the snake is not an accident; it was in the guise of a serpent the downfall of the race was accomplished.

Men and women who are subtle, smooth, deceitful, treacherous, secretive are called “snakes in the grass.” Their plans and movements are under cover; they strike or sting from an hidden covert. The serpent is synonymous with the hiss, the blazing eye, the forked tongue, the poison; once it catches the eye of a bird the poor thing may wail and flutter, but it is powerless to escape. The bird is drawn into the jaws of death by a strange magnetism.

This enemy of God and race is a serpent, slipping cautiously, noiselessly through all the dark, tangled mysteries about us. No one can fathom or interpret his cunning movements; we are stung, poisoned, charmed, fastened in the slimy coils, and yet do not know it. We have most to fear from the enemy who operates in the dark. This fallen archangel is never so dangerous as when acting in the personification of a serpent.

Dragon. In the Hebrew it is “tannoth,” howler—jackal; making a noise like the howling jackal in the wilderness. Again we are appalled at this title. The dragon is represented as a monstrous animal having the form of a serpent, with crested head, wings, and tremendous claws; ferocious and dangerous. The Scriptures have appropriated this fabulous monster—believed to have existed in days of mythology as the most dreaded creature on land or sea—to enforce and emphasize the danger of him who seeks our destruction. He is called the “great red dragon”—or fiery dragon, howling like a vicious jackal.

It was in this peculiar manifestation that he stood before the woman and sought to destroy the Man Child as soon as He was born; then cast a flood after her as she fled from his presence. The dragon incarnates himself, and King Herod at once seeks to destroy the infant Jesus (Matt. ii.; Rev. xii. 1-5).

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