Troublesome Topic: CONFUSION ABOUT SATAN AND THE SERPENT

Here are some of the things Michael Heiser says about Satan. I will quote Heiser first and reserve my responses till after all of his quotes.

On page 57 Heiser makes the following statements about Satan.

Satan means “adversary, prosecutor and challenger”… “It speaks of an official legal function within the ruling body- in this case, Yahweh’s council”. Satan is “Yahweh’s eyes and ears on the ground, reporting what he has seen and heard”.

In Job 1 and 2 he (Satan) is not a villain. He’s doing the job assigned to him by God”.

He is not the same as the serpent of Eden.

“The Old Testament doesn’t use the term Satan for the divine criminal of Eden … Later Jewish writing began to adopt it (the term Satan) as a proper name for the serpent figure from Genesis 3.”

In Job and Zechariah, Satan is not the Devil.

On page 63 (and others) Heiser says that the serpent was a member of the divine council of gods.

On page 91 Heiser says that the serpent was cast out of the council of gods and sent to earth.

“Jesus’ ministry is the beginning or the end for Satan and the gods of the nations. The great reversal is underway.” Pg. 281.

In a footnote on page 281 he writes, “with the commencement of the kingdom of God, Satan’s role as “accuser of the brethren” is finished. God is no longer listening to challenges as to whom he deems righteous… The inauguration of the kingdom of God by Messiah means that Satan, the Lord of the dead, has no “legal” authority in God’s court (council) by which to condemn any member of that Kingdom.”

Pg. 327  Satan was first in rebellion, therefore he is first in authority

MY RESPONSES

I agree that the name Satan means “adversary”. That does not mean he is on God’s council or doing God’s bidding.

Regarding the idea that Satan is God’s eyes and ears on the ground, think about all the times in the Bible where something happened, either good or bad, and God knew about it and responded with positive or negative consequences respectively. Do any of those stories indicate that another entity informed God of what was going on? Do we ever read of God relying on someone else to be his eyes and ears on the ground? Even in the story of Job, where Heiser seems to get his idea of “eyes and ears on the ground”, God already knew the spiritual condition of Job; He did not need Satan to inform him.

The passage in Job about Satan appearing before God is most easily and most Biblically understood as meaning that every being that God created, which includes angels and fallen angels, but not other gods, must answer to God. Likewise, his appearing before God does not mean that Satan “is God’s eyes and ears on the ground” – God needs no one else’s eyes and ears! The things Satan does are not part of an assignment from God; he does them on his own for the destruction of the followers of God and out of hatred toward God and all that God has created. Satan can function as our tempter only because God allows it for our strengthening. It is impossible for Satan to be playing a role assigned to him from God because God is characterized by truth, Satan is characterized by deceit. We know that Satan is a liar and the father of lies (Jn 8:44). He has lied from the beginning; he always lies; that is his nature. God is the God of truth. In Revelation, the sword with which Jesus will defeat Satan is His words of truth. Satan only lies and deceives; Jesus will defeat him with the truth. To say that Satan does God’s bidding would pit God against Himself.

The idea that Satan and the serpent are two different entities flies in the face of all Jewish and Christian teaching. Saying that the name Satan was applied to the Serpent in later Judaism does not change the fact that Heiser thinks they are two different entities, according to page 57. Revelation 12:9 makes clear that Satan, the old Serpent, the Devil and great Dragon are all the same entity. I cannot find a place in his book where Heiser explains why Revelation 12:9 uses those four names in reference to one entity. He touches on Rev 12:9 without explaining that, and then simply keeps talking about them as different beings, and keeps assuming that Satan was a part of the council of the gods up until the inauguration of the New Covenant.

If Satan and the Serpent were two different entities, Heiser should prove that conclusively because it is a very important point. But I don’t think he can prove it. So he resorts to the next best thing – he says it several times as if it is fact and then builds on. But such assumptions make weak foundations.

If Satan and the Serpent are the same, that would be a big problem for Heiser. Why did God kick Satan out of heaven and then allow him into his divine council?

When Heiser says on g. 327 that “the divine rebel was first in rebellion, and thus in authority” he seems to join together the Serpent and Satan, whereas elsewhere he separates them into two entities. In the three paragraphs leading up to his statement on page 327, Heiser uses the name Satan several times, but never mentions the Serpent. Then He says “the divine rebel [was] first in rebellion and thus authority”. Which one was the divine rebel? Was it Satan or the Serpent?  Heiser creates a problem by separating the two, but he fixes it by saying that the Old Testament saw them as separate entities but by the time of the New Testament they had joined them into one. But that still leaves the problem of whether they were two entities or one. It appears that Heiser thinks Satan and the Serpent are two different entities and the New Testament writers erroneously joined them together. On page 327 Heiser is talking about the Apostle Paul’s use of vocabulary and that is why the Serpent and Satan are joined into one entity. But honesty should have compelled Heiser to use a qualifier to indicate that Paul thought of them as the same or Paul had joined the two in his mind. Without such qualifiers, it sounds like Heiser is contradicting himself – again.

Heiser assumes that God listened to Satan until the inauguration of the New Covenant. The only “evidence” for this is that Heiser’s proposed worldview needs it to be that way. He also implies that Satan had legal authority in God’s court (council) to condemn God’s followers prior to the New covenant, but he no longer has such authority (page 281). As evidence he uses Luke 10:17 where Jesus said, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from Heaven.” This does not have to mean that Satan fell from a position in a council of gods, nor does it mean that Satan had authority and a role given to him by God and that role was to accuse and condemn the believers. It can easily mean that Satan fell from a high position (of his own making), or it can refer to the original fall from heaven prior to Genesis 3. The fact that God allows Satan to function within certain limits does not mean that God sanctions Satan’s actions, assigned him to do them, or granted him the authority to do them.

When Heiser’s makes the statement “first in rebellion and thus authority” (pg. 327), it appears that he is applying this to Satan, although he never makes that clear. The name Satan is used in the paragraph before the one in which this statement occurs and 6 times on the previous page. The name Serpent does not appear at all in the discussion of the several pages around page 327. However, Satan rebelled prior to Adam and Eve sinning in the Garden of Eden, so how was he a part of God’s council, doing God’s bidding, with God’s bestowment of authority from then until the inauguration of the New Covenant? True authority never comes from rebellion! Rebellion is an attempt to steal authority. Therefore, the statement “first in rebellion and thus authority” is ludicrous!

This is what I mean when I say that Heiser is rewriting the Bible to be something totally different than what we have known. He changes every major doctrine and teaching of the Bible.

The next lesson is YHVH IS LORD.