(ver 1.7)  This Part 1 in a series of Bible lessons about things that Satan does not want you know about him.  Satan in the Bible is called by so many different names, titles, characteristics, symbols and descriptions.  Each one of these that were given to us by God reveal Satan in a new way for us to learn from.  For example, in Revelation 12:9 the name Satan is given to us and it is directly linked to be the symbolic “Great Red Dragon” in the book of Revelation.  Satan is then further revealed as the “ancient serpent” in Genesis 3:1 in the same verse.  Since Satan is called both the serpent in the garden in Genesis and now the Great Dragon in Revelation we learn from these two symbolic titles that he has gained significant power and strength.  But maybe you did not know that and learned something brand new.   In other places in the Bible Satan is also called the “deceiver” and the “father of lies” by God.  If you wold like to see a more complete list of these Names, Titles, Descriptions and Symbols for Satan in the Bible you can go read that reference document and find those that I have been shown by God up until this point in time.  Satan has had an explicit evil agenda in place ever since he deceived Eve and caused Adam to sin in the garden.  Satan has implemented this plan based upon misconceptions and misdirection that diverts your attntion away from you finding or knowing the truth.  There are a number of major things that Satan doesn’t want you to know about him.  He tries very hard to keep these truths secret from you because they will cause you to think differently about your abilities and position in Christ Jesus.   Today I’m going to tell you some of these guarded secrets that were revealed in the Bible for our benefit placed there by our wise and mighty God to help teach us the truth about our enemy.

NUMBER 1

1. Satan DOES NOT Want You To Know That He Exists

I know now as a Christian that Satan is a real spiritual being, but there was a time that I did not believe in his existence.  Many people are in the exact same ignorant boat as I was when I did not believe in the existence of spiritual things.  Unsaved people and even many new carnal Christians are generally very oblivious to spiritual realities, because they are consumed with natural things like drugs, alcohol, sex, money, power, fame, sports, food, music, and etc.   Not only do most people in the kingdom of darkness not know that Satan, evil spirits, fallen angels and demons exist, they also do not understand that they themselves are also a spirit being that is simply living here on the earth in a natural physical body.  Oh, sure there is a fascination in the world with the supernatural and spirits on TV, in movies and in video games.  But these are generally put out by Satan as a distraction to the truth to keep people from finding out that he is real and to learn how he operates with them daily.  Satan promotes these fictional TV shows, entertainments and activities to gain access into the minds of people to deceive them further from the truth.  As long as you do not know that there is a real spiritual enemy in this world named Satan, you will never know that you need to resist him or fight against what he is doing in your life.  We learn of the existence of Satan by reading the Bible and that is our only reliable source of any proof or evidence for his existence.  If you do not believe the Bible is the inspired Word of God then you are in serious trouble looking for invalid sources of truth in the other books of the world.  You can read about Satan’s existence and activities like in Mark 4:15, Luke 4:8, Luke 13:16 and Acts 26:18 to name only a few verses that teach of his existence.   I pray that you learn to study this subject in order to learn that Satan does exist and that he is your enemy.

NUMBER 2

2.  Satan DOES NOT Want You To Know How He Operates

Recently I wrote a Bible lesson on the subject Was There a Physical Talking Snake in the Garden of Eden that deceived Eve.  If you read that lesson then you know that there was not a literal talking serpent in the garden.  It is illegal for Satan to tempt people supernaturally and that is not how he generally operates because of the spiritual laws created by God.  TV shows and movies that promote supernatural activity are created by Satan to be pure distractions to how he normally comes to us to operate.  Satan uses, mostly mental thoughts, ideas and suggestions to influence and control your behavior.  For example, if you have been having thoughts or ideas about suicide these are demonically inspired to try to get you to do what he is suggesting.  The source of evil thoughts and these bad influential ideas are coming from Satan.  Satan can even place strong desires within you to help guide you into doing wrong.   These are very common ways of how spirit beings interact with any natural human being.  I hope that you understand this because it will be the same for you.

The main emphasis from this section is to teach you to watch your thoughts.  What I have been trying to say is that these evil thoughts in your mind to hurt someone are coming from Satan to attempt to get you do something that you shouldn’t.   Have you ever considered how much people talk after a school shooting occurs about the factor of mental illness?  Every crazy school shooter was caused by Satan’s barrage of evil thoughts to kill people.  Every shooter was tormented by these thoughts until they finally gave into them.  That is how Satan works and if you do not know this then you are at risk of the same.  Satan comes to humans with thoughts of evil and these will always be very subtle attempts to control you to do what he wants you to do.  I’ll say this again, every thought that you have is not from God or comes from your own mind.  Let me give you a Bible verse that will help confirm this truth if you can see it:

2Co 10:5  Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ;

Why would God tell a Christian to guard their thoughts if none of these came from Satan?   That would not make any logical sense.  Why does anyone guard something?  Guarding the President is normally done to keep evil from coming near him to do him harm.  This is the exact same concept that God is speaking of here in this verse.  You see I once had a man leave me a comment on my Bible lesson about homosexuality and he said he had these thoughts for other boys and men since he was a young child and he said that this proved that God created him this way.  I tried to tell him that these were Satan’ thoughts that were given to him to try to steer him away from the truth but he refused to listen to me.  Any thought that is contrary to the Bible is from the devil.  If you are standing on the top ledge of the Grand Canyon and you suddenly get the thought to jump off then it would be really stupid if you didn’t realize that this thought was from Satan and you did it and went to hell.   Learn to do what God teaches about your negative thoughts of influence and cast them down.

NUMBER 3

3. Satan DOES NOT Want You to Know that He Can’t Be Everywhere At Once

In the Old Testament we have a greatly misunderstood book of the Bible called the Book of Job.  I will not attempt to teach this book today, but I will draw out some valuable information that we can learn from it about Satan.  In this story, Satan is said to appear before God in heaven.  God asks Satan, where have you been?  Right there that question teaches us an extremely critical fact about Satan.  Perhaps you missed it?   Satan’s reply to God was that he has been going to and fro across the earth and from walking up and down in it (Job 1:7).  From the presence of God’s question and Satan’s reply we can learn so very much about our enemy.  The first thing to learn is that Satan is not on the earth when he said this.  The second thing to learn is that Satan is not everywhere all at once.  In theological terms Satan is not omnipresent and cannot be everywhere at the same time like God can.  If Satan has to travel from place to place on the earth then he can only be in one place at a time.  That is interesting isn’t it?  In the New Testament we get some further confirmation of this fact by reading:

1 Peter 5:8  Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour;

You can see the same basic information being given to us in this verse.  Satan is stalking about the earth looking for someone that he can attack.  The statement implications being given to us is that he can’t attack everybody at the same time.  You also see that he has to walk from place to place in order to seek for someone to attack.  We can conclude from these two verses that Satan is not everywhere at once.  Therefore Satan is NOT omnipresent like God is.  Now having said all of that we don’t know how many demons and fallen angels that Satan has under his control.  Revelation 12:4 tells us that 1/3 of the angels fell with him.  But, we don’t know how many total angels there were to start with.  From information found in Hebrews there seems to be a bunch of them and it calls their number innumerable.  There is also a story in the Gospels where Jesus casts out a legion of demons from just one man.  This shows us that one man can have hundreds of spirits in him at once.  Therefore while the devil cannot be present with everyone at the same time, he can still send his demons to them and this makes him appear like he is everywhere at the same time.  This is just some good information to learn about your enemy.

NUMBER 4

4. Satan DOES NOT Want You To Know That His Time Is Short

Revelation 12:12  Therefore rejoice, ye heavens and ye that dwell in them, Woe to the inhabitants of the earth and of the sea!  for the devil is come down unto you, having great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short time.

This verse informs us that Satan is very angry with something or someone.  Why?  Because he knows his time is very short.  Satan is aware of an end time.  You did realize that, didn’t you?  Many people in the world are oblivious that the end is near.  They think everything has happened the same way from the beginning and everything will just continue on like this for ever (2 Peter 3:4).  However, Satan and the demons are aware that their time is so very short.  Here is a Bible verse that will help to see that the devils knew there was coming an end time even when Jesus was present on the earth:

Matthew 8:29  And behold, they cried out saying What have we to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of  God?  are thou come hither to torment us before the time?

These are the words of the demons that possessed a man where Jesus was going.  These demons exclaimed who exactly Jesus was.  Why were they questioning Jesus’ right to be there?  Then they ask him have you come to torment us before the time.  What time are they talking about?  It is amazing that these spiritual beings are aware that there is coming a time of torment.   All of this occurs still today, men walk about clueless to the times and the seasons while Satan and his forces know that they are almost done.

NUMBER 5

5.  Satan DOES NOT Want You To Know He Was Defeated

Colossians 2:15  And having spoiled principalities and powers he made a show of them openly, triumphing over them in it.

We can see that Satan was defeated by what Jesus did on the cross.  The blood of Jesus not only forgave our sins, it caused the defeat of Satan.  The term spoiled is a military term when an army would take a city, they would take the wealth of the enemy and leave them with nothing of value.  Genghis Kahn, Alexander the Great, Napoleon,  Hitler, etc. we can go on and on, but the conquering army would always walk away with the wealth of those that were conquered.   Here is an informative verse of scripture that also helps us to see what Jesus has done:

1 Corinthians 2:8 Which none of the princes of this world knew: for had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.

You see from this verse we can clearly see that Satan now has a major problem.  Something that Jesus did, caused his status to change.  Something that Jesus did in His death has doomed Satan and his followers and has set their destiny.  Many Christians today have only seen a fraction of the things that Jesus accomplished on the cross.  This is just another example of the fact that there are many things found in the Bible that we do not have the complete story on as of yet.  We can make a broad conclusion, that based upon this verse that the death of Jesus Christ sealed Satan’s future.

So why if Satan was defeated, wasn’t he just thrown into the pit and that was the end of it?  It is an interesting question, that most have never tried to answer.  Satan has a right to be here as long as descendants of Adam have the right to be here.  The world was given to Adam (Gen 1:26) and Adam gave it to Satan (Luke 4:5-6).  So we in effect see a sub-lease being established.  As long as Adam’s lease or time period is valid, Satan’s time period is valid.  However, we also now know that this time period is now growing very short.  If you have been reading my other Bible lesson you will already understand that the time period of human history was prophesied by God Genesis 1 to be approximately 6000 years.  We can calculate that we are very, very close to the end of that time period right now.  If you learned anything today, learn that Satan is a loser and if you are following him your time is very short to change your mind.

NUMBER 6

6. Satan DOES NOT Want You To Know That You Have Authority Over Him

Did you notice that earlier I quoted a scripture that said Satan was going about, seeking those who he could devour?  Apparently he cannot come into your house and take everything from you unless you let him or permit him to do something to cause it to happen.    If you could just find out what opens the door for the enemy to come in, I bet you would stop it.  I don’t think I have a complete answer to that question, but I have seen at least part of the answer.  We know sin, allows Satan access into our lives.  Then in Hosea 4:6 it tells us that God’s people are destroyed for a lack of knowledge.  So in effect we can see that ignorance or not knowing the right things, can allow Satan access into our lives.  What else opens the door to the enemy?  I believe that not knowing that you have been given authority over Satan will also allow him to come into your life to attempt to work his evil works.  Here is what Jesus told us:

Luke 10:19 Behold I give unto you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy; and nothing shall by any means hurt you.

If you don’t understand Biblical symbolism you will immediately get the wrong idea that you should be able to walk in a viper pit and not get bitten.  But that is not what Jesus was talking about in this statement.  Jesus is talking about the symbolic “serpent” that deceived Eve and that was literally Satan.  The symbolic scorpions in this verse refers to the demons or evil spirits that are under Satan’s power.  Understanding these symbolic references are essential to understanding the Bible correctly.  Not everything in the Bible is literal.  This verse tells us that Jesus gave us power over these evil spiritual forces.  This word for “power” actually means “authority” or “legal jurisdiction” over these powers.  The term translated as “power” of the enemy is a completely different Greek word that means “miraculous ability”.  You learn from this verse that Satan still has ability to do some amazing things in the earth, but Jesus said I give you my authority over what he can do to you.  You might not be able to stop what he does to your neighbor, but you can certainly stop what he does to you and your family.  This spiritual authority must be exercised by your choice either during the attack or before the attack takes place.  How do you do that?  Maybe I’ll get into that in another lesson.  Thanks for taking the time to read and study the Bible to learn about our enemy Satan.  Share this spiritual knowledge with the poeple that you know and continue to walk in your new found knowledge from God.   God Bless you!

If you would like to continue reading in this series, please go to “Part 2“.