Religion

Dave - the church has spent over $300 million in payoffs to victims, and it was just revealed the leaders felt the need to spend over $10 million more in lobbying to limit their future exposure.

Wouldn't this lend credence to the notion of a widespread cover up, and more importantly, knowledge of such up to the highest levels?

I think this reiterates the theory that power / money corrupts, be it a government, company, or a church. You can tolerate, or even expect it, from the first two. But not the church.

Those payoffs could have been avoidance of bad PR or court or some reason other than guilt.  

Im not saying it didn’t happen.  I’m just wondering if we know the whole story.

Yes, there is no question of their betrayal... 

whats more, my observation is, to whatever extent it has happened in the Catholic Church, that institution is, by no means unique in these vile abuses:  They are the biggest and, so, they have been the focus of the media, by and large, but Satan attacking the church, worldwide, but particularly in the United States where Christianity has enjoyed a lot of expansion and freedom, is not isolated to Catholicism.

My wife is leading a short term missionary trip to an isolated area in Belize.  They leave tonight. We have been amazed... sometimes overly concerned ... at all the ways our enemy is trying to bring this trio to a halt.  From passport problems, travel problems, health problems (both physical and mental),  and many more, my wife has become excited at what they will find in Belize if Satan is working so hard to try to thwart it.

our job... meaning the church’s job... is to bring others to belief in Jesus Christ.  Satan and his minions don’t want that to happen so they are all about influencing and attempting to influence individuals who are in the church to act in such a way as to push others away, and to redirect those not already in the church away from it.  I see every turmoil that develops in or around any church (building or denomination) to be just this activity by the enemy, working through the wickedness of man.

Wow, Bick, those are great questions.  

• Satan once was a high-level angel who let his pride get in his way:  He considered himself equal to Christ and demanded he be sat in that place of honor.  For that, he and the many angels (now referred to as demons) who sided with him, were thrown out of Heaven.  His efforts, now, are two-fold:  Keep [us] from coming to God for salvation, and if/when he fails at that, keep us from convincing others to come to God for salvation.  
• Satan does very little by himself.  As with Heaven, Satans realm has an hierarchy of leadership down to the most lowly demon, and we living humans each have at least one demon assigned to us whose job it is to know us and know how to tempt us away from God.
• No demon, neither Satan himself, has any of the attributes of God:  so they are not omnipresent, or omniscient or omnipotent.  They cannot read our minds and cannot force us to do anything.  They work by “whispering” into our spirit and, then, waiting to see what we do to know if their “whisper” was successful.  We “hear” these whispers as our own self talk:  If we are looking in the mirror thinking “dang, I have to lose some weight,” that is our own self talk (usually)... if we are looking in the mirror and obsessing about our weight, making self-deprecating remarks about never being good enough, or everybody hates a fat man, that is likely our demon whispering into us (not always, of course).
• A demon’s job is to tear us down, focus out attention on anything EXCEPT the salvation God offers.

We are not given a number in Scripture, but the examples we do see there suggest there are far more demons than living people.  Of course we also cannot overlook the possibility that one demon can oversee several people at once, or several demons work on a single person.

as I understand it, “our” demons are assigned in different ways:  Some attach to us by our own choices.  For example, it is possible a guy could be overly given to pornography, listens to a demon’s “whispers,” and eventually starts looking at adultera, or homosexuality, or rape (also dependent, of course, on his upbringing and history and genetic make up).  Like I said earlier, demins cannot force us to act.  But they can and do lay in wait for us to do, and then glom onto us with that particular temptation.

since demons have a hierarchy, like any disciplined army, I assume they can also be assigned to us, probably with the intent to propel us further into a given sin, or to stop a person from influencing large groups of people.  

One thing Ive noticed through Scripture is, demons function differently with non-believers  than they do with believers:  those of us who have been saved by the grace of God, for one thing, cannot be possessed:  we can only be oppressed (and, of course, tempted, as can anyone); and since we belong to God, demins have to get permission from God to try to persuade us (as Satan had to do when trying to turn Job).  Non-believers, a.k.a. “The unsaved,” can be possessed AND oppressed, and have no moral straight edge by which to judge if “this” is O.K or “that” is wrong.  Although most regular people, even unsaved, DO still have a sense of right and wrong.  Also, demons have no hope or possibility of taking a believer to Hell...  but will spare no cost to prevent a non-believer from turning to God (“going to Heaven”)

There are no specific numbers given for angels and demons in Scripture (and most biblical numbers are symbolic anyways) but what Dave says here certainly does not contradict Scripture--and seems in accord with the general sense of the demonic as it appears in the Bible.

C.S. Lewis' Screwtape Letters is a fascinating--if speculative--insight into the mind of the Satan's minions.

Credo’s right, we aren’t given numbers, and neither are we told specifically when Satan and all those who followed him were booted, except Satan was obviously present in the Garden of Eden, so we can at least conclude the rebellion occurred prior to creation.

as to what they all did prior to creation and prior to population growth, we are not told, either.  However, you have tickled another deep theological question even learned men still question (so I’m definitely not going to resolve here).

when you ask what we’re they doing, Bear in mind they were booted out of Heaven for their rebellion and there is no reason to believe their punishment ended the rebellion.  Every instance of evil that appears in the Bible shows Satans long held intent is to destroy what God has built.  So, presumably, even before creation, they were plotting and planning to that end... O.K., now, hold on to that image as we take this turn:

Genesis 1:1-2  “In the beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth, and the earth was without form and void...”

there are theologians who believe the word “was” in verse 2 is more accurately translated “became.”  If that is so, what happened to cause the earth to become formless and void?  Could it be that God created once, Satan and his followers successfully trashed it, and Verse 3 is the rebuild?  

Also, if that is so, how far did God get in that first effort?  Is that when dinosaurs existed?  And how long did it last before Satan destroyed it or before God started the rebuild?  Is this the final nail in the “young earth” posit?

well, like I said, deeper theological minds are still considering this, so I’m not going to resolve it here... but it is fascinating (maybe just to me?) to consider.