Is the Devil a Myth E-Book

C. F. Wimberly

• Herausgeber: C. F. Wimberly
• Kategorie: Ratgeber
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

Chapters include; The Problem Of Evil; The Origin Of Evil; Lucifer; Devil-Satan-Serpent-Dragon; Diabolus-Demonia-Abaddon-Apollyon; The Devil A “Blockade”; The Great Magician; The Roaring Lion; An Angel Of Light; The Sower Of Tares; The Arch Slanderer; The Double Accuser; Satan A Spy; A Quack Doctor; The Devil A Theologian; The Devil's Righteousness; The World's Tempter; The Confidence Man; The Trapper; The Incomparable Archer; The Father Of Liars; Kingship Of Satan; The Devil's Handmaiden; The Astute Author; The Hypnotist; Devil Possession; Devil Oppression; Devil Abduction; The Rationale Of Suicide; Devil Worship; Victory Through The Victor; The Arrest And Imprisonment; The Final Consummation; and, Satanic Symbol In Nature.

Leseprobe

C. F. Wimberly

Is the devil a Mith?

First digital edition 2017 by Anna Ruggieri

Contents

Preface

Chapter 1. The Problem Of Evil

Chapter 2. The Origin Of Evil

Chapter 3. Lucifer

Chapter 4. Devil-Satan-Serpent-Dragon

Chapter 5. Diabolus-Demonia-Abaddon-Apollyon

Chapter 6. The Devil A“Blockade”

Chapter 7. The Great Magician

Chapter 8. The Roaring Lion

Chapter 9. An Angel Of Light

Chapter 10. The Sower Of Tares

Chapter 11. The Arch Slanderer

Chapter 12. The Double Accuser

Chapter 13. Satan A Spy

Chapter 14. A Quack Doctor

Chapter 15. The Devil A Theologian

Chapter 16. The Devil A Theologian (Continued)

Chapter 17. The Devil's Righteousness

Chapter18. The World's Tempter

Chapter 19. The Confidence Man

Chapter 20. The Trapper

Chapter 21. The Incomparable Archer

Chapter 22. The Father Of Liars

Chapter 23. Kingship Of Satan

Chapter 24. TheDevil's Handmaiden

Chapter 25. The Astute Author

Chapter 26. The Hypnotist

Chapter 27. Devil Possession

Chapter 28. Devil Oppression

Chapter 29. Devil Abduction

Chapter 30. The Rationale Of Suicide

Chapter 31. Devil Worship

Chapter 32. Victory Through The Victor

Chapter 33. The ArrestAnd Imprisonment

Chapter 34. The Final Consummation

Chapter 35. Satanic Symbol In Nature

Preface

It is the writer’s firm conviction, inthese days when the most enthusiastic “bookworm” cannot even keep up with the titles of the book output, that an earnest, sensible reason should be given for adding another to the already endless list of books. We have enough books to-day, “good, bad, indifferent," with which, if they were collected, to build another Cyclops pyramid. The sage of the Old Testament declared in his day, concerning the endless making of books; such a statement, compared with modern writing and publishing of books, sounds amusing.

Every possible subject, vagary, or ism, for which a book could be written, is overworked. Bible themes of all grades, from orthodoxy to ultra higher criticism, have flooded the land. Especially is the iconoclast in much evidence; he is free lance, and shows no quarters. Cardinal tenets of Bible faith, so long unquestioned, are being smitten with a merciless hand. Disintegration is the most obvious fact among us; nothing is too sacred for the crucible of what is termed “scholarship.”

But why this book? Let us take a little survey. Over against the modern idea, that the race is endowed with all the inherent elements of goodness necessary to its regeneration, there is a correspondent belief that evil is only an error. When the race by social and mental evolution succeeds in eliminating all the superstitions and false dogmas, the body politic will be self-curative, like the physical body, restoring itself by means of inspiration, respiration, exercise, sleep, food, etc., once the causes of disease are eliminated from the system.

For several decades we have been approaching the doctrine which denies all Personalism—either good or bad. When we repudiate the Bible teaching, that the source of all evil emanates from a great Personality, the Bible teaching of the Incarnation suffers in the same proportion.

The title of this book is a question, and one by no means strained, if considered from the view-point of modern thought. We have undertaken an answer. If by reason and revelation we can arrive at a satisfactory conclusion, the gain thereby cannot be overestimated. If the personality of Satan can be successfully consigned to the religious junk pile, our Bible is at once thrown into a jumble of contradictions and inconsistencies. The result will be even worse than ourenemies claim for it now. One of the late recognized writers on the Old Testament says: “The Old Testament is no longer considered valuable among scholars as a sacred oracle, but it is valuable in that it is the history of a people.” If the Devil is a Myth, our Bible can be nothing better than historical chaos.

In the preparation of these pages, we wish to acknowledge with deep gratitude the assistance of Mr. S. D. Gordon, author of “Quiet Talks”; Dr. I. M. Haldeman, author and preacher; Dr. Gross Alexander, editor, author, and preacher; Dr. W. B. Godbey, anauthor of great learning and extensive travel; Dr. B. Carradine, evangelist and author; Dr. H. C. Morrison, college president, editor, author, and evangelist; Prof. L. T. Townsend, and Hon. Philip Mauro.

If the reading of this book shall bring to any-struggling soul helpful information concerning our common Enemy, we shall be doubly repaid for the labour of its preparation. We send it forth saturated with prayer.

C. F. W.

Madisonville, Ky

Chapter 1.The Problem Of Evil

“And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in theearth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart wasonly evil continually.”—Genesis vi.5.

That we may appreciate this discussion, removed as far aspossible from theological terminology and theories, and get aconcrete view-point, the following head-lines from a single issueof a metropolitan daily will suffice: “War Clouds HangingLow;” "Men Higher Up Involved;”“Eighty-seven Divorces On Docket;” “Blood FlowsIn the Streets;” “Gaunt Hunger Among Strikers;”“Arrested For Forgery;” “A White SlaveVictim;” “Attempted Train Robbery;” “KillsWife and Ends Own Life;” “Two Men Bite Dust;”“Investigate Bribery.”

This fearful list may be duplicated almost every day in theyear. Our land is deluged with crime, without respect to person orplace; its blight touches all circles from the slum to the fourhundred. Wealth and poverty, culture and ignorance, fame andobscurity, suffer alike from this Pandora Box scourge. The march ofhistory—the pilgrimage of the race, has enjoyed but littlerespite from tears and blood. Those who strive to maintain astandard of purity, righteousness, and honour, are beset bystrange, powerful, intangible influences, from the cradle to thegrave. The child in swaddling clothes has a predisposition towillfullness, deception, and disobedience; paroxysms of passion andanger are manifested with the slightest provocation.

Notwithstanding the barriers thrown up by the home and society;the incentives and assurances for noble, industrious living, thedykes are continually giving way, so that police power and thefrowning walls of penal institutions are insufficient to check theoverflow. The Church of God, with its open Book, ringing outmessages of lifeand hope at every corner; the object lessons on the“wages of sin,” sweeping in full view before us, likethe reel-film of a motion picture—do not seem to lessen theharvest of moral shipwreck.

According to some recent police records and statistics, onlyabout one-half of the country's criminals are apprehended; if thisis true of those who violate the law, a much smaller per cent, ofthose who break the perfect moral law, as related to domestic andreligious life, are ever exposed. When these facts are considered,the perspective for the reign of righteousness is lurid andhopeless. The country has been amazed, recently, at the revelationsof how municipal and national treasuries are being looted byextortion, extravagance, and misrule, on the part of men holdingpositions as a sacred trust. Civilization fosters and maintains atraffic which has not one redeeming feature; besides killingdirectly and indirectly more men daily than were blown up in thebattle-ship Maine.

Let us view the problem of evil from another angle: a writer onthe subject of food supplies says the earth each year furnishes anabundant quantity of fruits, meats,cereals, and vegetables to feedall her peoples; yet gaunt famine is never entirely removed. Evenin America a surprising per cent, of our people are underfed andunderclothed. “Fifty thousand go to bed hungry every night inNew York City," declares a professor of economics. The same ratioobtains in other large cities of our land. Scenes of pinchingpoverty occur within a few blocks of the most wanton luxury andextravagance. One lady spends fifty thousand dollars—enoughto satisfy all the hungry— on one evening’sentertainment. Oranges rot on the Pacific coast by car-loads, whenthe children of the Ghetto scarcely taste them.

Nature fills her storehouses, and tries to scatter with aprodigal hand, but her resources are cornered and controlled by acriminal system which revolves around the “almightydollar”—the root of all evil.

Are we to conclude that man’s free agency isresponsiblefor this moral monstrosity? Or, to be theologically particular,shall we say, free agency dominated by an innate disposition toevil: human depravity, original sin, the carnal mind? Allowing thefullest latitude to the free moral agency of therace; allowing theevil nature, like the foul soil producing a continuous crop of vileweeds, to produce an inexorable bent, or predisposition to sin,operating on man’s free agency—have we a full andsufficient explanation of the presence and power of Evil?

The carnal mind is enmity with God, not subject to His laws; butthe carnal mind is in competition with a human nature,wherein are found emotions and sentiments that are far from beingall sinful: sympathy, tenderness, benevolence, paternal andfiliallove, sex-love, and honesty. Again, we rarely findenvironment as an unmixed evil. Notwithstanding these hindrancesthe press almost daily has details and delineations of crimes sofearful and shocking that no trace of the human appears. Frequentlywe hearof a man, who has committed some dreadful outrage,personified as “beast,” “fiend,”“inhuman,” etc. A young man in his teens, wishing tomarry, but being under age and without sufficient means, decidedthat if he could dispose of his father, mother, brother, andsister—the farm and property would all be his, then,unmolested, could consummate his matrimonial plans. Whereupon,armed with an axe, at the midnight hour, he executes his“fiendish” plot. Another man, with a young andbeautiful wife, and the father of two bright children, becomesinfatuated with a young woman in a distant state; he woos and winsher affections; he returns home to arrange “some businessmatters” on the day preceding the wedding. This businessmatter was to dispose of his wife and children, which he did; onthe following night, led to the marriage altar an innocent,unsuspecting girl. A young minister commits double murder, and onthe following day enters his pulpit and preaches from the text:“Let the words of my mouth, and the meditations of my heart,be acceptable in Thy sight, O Lord.”

These cases are actual occurrences, mentioned for emphasis only,that the problem of evil may be studied from life. These examplesprove conclusively that the problem goes deeper than humandepravity or free agency; both are accessories—conditions,binding cords, as it were, but the jarring stroke comes from amightier hand.

The unregenerated heart has been calleda “playground,” and a “coaling station” for the headmaster of all villainies. It was more thanwounded pride and vanity that propagated the scheme of Haman,whereby a whole nation was to be destroyed at a single stroke.

Vengeance and hate are terrible passions, but only as they arefanned by the breath of an inhabitant of the Inferno can they go tosuch extremes.

It was more than a desire to crush out heresy that couldinstigate a “St. Bartholomew’s Day,” then singthe Te Deum after the bloody deed was accomplished.

We shall endeavour in the subsequent pages to throw a few raysof light, in obscure corners, on the problem of evil through itsmultiform phases and ramifications.

Chapter 2. The Origin Of Evil

“And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent,called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: hewas cast outinto the earth, and his angels were cast out withhim.”—Revelation xii. 9.

It requires but a casual survey of this problem to reach aconclusion that its hideousness cannot be explained by any otherhypothesis than the power of an invisible Personality.When wescrutinize the footprints of the race, it will be found thatprogress has been along a dark, slimy trail; the infidels andphilosophers who are loud in their boastings of inherent goodnesswill have difficulty in reconciling this fact. All who think areconfronted with an ever-recurring question—yea, exclamations:why do such things happen? What meaneth these barbarities, ravages,cruelties? Why so much domestic discord, ending in ruin—somany suicides? Why do men and women hurl themselves overtheprecipice of vice and deadly indulgences—when even anovice might easily see the inevitable?

For a parallel we are reminded of an incident in war: log-chainswere used when the cannon-ball supply was exhausted; lanes thewidth of the chain length were mowed through the ranks of theopposing army. These chasms of death were closed up each time, onlyto be cut down again by the next discharge. The pathway of ruin isthronged—the “broad road ” is easy; however,there is something stranger than this utter blindness: the victimslaugh and shout on this highway, paved as it is by the macadam ofcrushed humanity.

Now, can there be found a rationale for this dreadful twist inhuman affairs—this seeming unfathomable conundrum? We cannotbelieve that God would createa “footstool” in whichsin, suffering, and misery were to abound; no such provision couldhave been in the divine plan. In the Word of God alone we find theexplanation of it all. The Word gives an unmistakable account of aninsurrection in heaven: “Michael and his angels foughtagainst the dragon, and the dragon fought and his angels, andprevailed not.” This strange warfare was inaugurated by thegreat archangelic leader.

This “war in heaven” could have but one ending:the complete overthrow of the disturber and his followers. Theywere cast out, and are, beyond a doubt, swarming around thissin-blinded planet—invisible, yet personal and all butomnipresent. When we remember that one-third of the angelicpopulation of heaven cast their lot with this chieftain, hisstrength and personality can be somewhat understood. It is written:“The tail (influence) of the dragon drew the third part ofthe stars (angels) of heaven, and cast them down to theearth.” In their relation to heaven, the dragon and hisangels met with irremediable ruin; now, defeated, humiliated,maddened, doomed, this fallen archangel and his innumerablemyrmidons are filling the whole earth with every curse that can beconjured up by their superior, supernatural intelligence. There canbe no room to doubt the truth of this hellish propaganda, as he iscalled the “ god of this world."

It must be kept clearly in mind that the powers of darkness can,in no sense, mean an ethereal, impersonal spirit of evil—orperverseness of weak human nature; butrather a Being who rules andcommands legions upon legions of subjects—demons, each ofthem endowed with all the powers and gifts possessed when they wereministering emissaries of God. They are now “the angels whichkept not their first estate."

We haveno way to estimate the size of this satanic army,marshalled for the destruction of the race and the overthrow ofChrist’s kingdom. However, we read in the tenth chapter ofRevelation that two hundred million were turned loose in the earthat one time. Tenthousand were in the country of the Gadarenes whenthe Master entered there; no wonder the entire land was kept interror, even though their incarnation seemed to have been limitedto one man living in a graveyard. Seven demons were cast out of onewoman.

We should keep in mind the distinction between “thedevil” and demons; there is but one Devil, but thedemons are swarming the length and breadth of the whole earth. Justas God directs His angels in ministeries of righteousness, so thisgod of darkness directs his angels to do his nefarious will. Thereare feats so daring and important that the Devil, it seems, willnot trust to his underlings. He engineered in person thetemptations of the Master; he entered the heart of Judas, andcaused him to sell hisLord, then commit suicide.

The Bible undoubtedly teaches that Satan and his cohorts, havingaccess to our fallen natures (which became so through hiscontribution of “forbidden fruit”—his greattriumph in the Garden), are inciting this world to all the crimesknown to our criminal dockets. Think of the train wreckers,rapists, incendiaries, white slavers, riots, strikes, grafters,gamblers, etc.; and as Paul has catalogued them:“unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, maliciousness,envy, deceit, malignity, whisperers, backbiters, haters of God,despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedientto parents, covenant breakers, without natural affection,implacable, unmerciful.”

No one can consider this long, gruesome list of iniquitieswithout a feeling that they originated, somehow, in the realm ofsupernatural darkness. The worst things that can be said of fallenhumanity is its availability and susceptibility to the machinationsof this past master of the Pit, whose only ambition is to rob theblood of its purchase possessions by wrecking the souls for whomChrist died. Our sinful nature responds to his touch; the wonderfulgamut of the soul is capable of being swept its entire length byhis skill. A master player on God’s greatestinstrument—His masterpiece. All the fearful deeds committedseem to be acts of volition, and they are; but in the darkbackground lurks another superior will responsible for theinitiative.

Chapter 3. Lucifer

“How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, sonof themorning! How art thou cut down to the ground, which did weaken thenations!”—Isaiah xiv. 12.

“And the third angel sounded, and there fell a great starfrom heaven, burning as it were a lamp.”—Revelationviii. 10.

“ And the fifth angel sounded, and Isaw a star fall fromheaven unto the earth; and to him was given the key of thebottomless pit.”—Revelation ix. 1.

It is reasonable to believe that all intelligent beings aremorally free; and if free, are on probation. Intelligence,will-power, free agency, and probation are logically inseparable,regardless of place or environment. Without question, in thenatural world this is true, and therefore must be true in thespiritual world. That men, angels, archangels, and redeemed spiritsnever attain a stateof character beyond the possibility of freechoice is a most fearful responsibility.

But for the imperialism of intelligent will, the fall ofangels is unreasonable, improbable, impossible. Just howtemptation can assail the inhabitants of heaven—the land, weare told, “where the wicked cease from troubling and theweary are at rest”—is beyond all human comprehension.Startling as this truth appears to be, the Bible teaches it inunmistakable language.

“Lucifer, son of the morning” an archangel, a greatbeing, created in holiness, standing near the Throne of God. Hisname means “light bearer,” indicative of his gloriousoffice. We can scarcely imagine such honour, such power, suchdistinction. Just what the high-calling of “lightbearer” was, as it was performed under the highest commissionin the universe, the Book fails to tell us; but the office ofLucifer was surely the peer of Michael or Gabriel, if not abovethem in rank. Brilliancy and splendour radiated from hisperson.

May we dare, not altogether bythe imagination, to venture intothat remote, prehistoric time when the Second Person of theTrinity—the Anointed One—the Logos, a being ofperfection, made in the image of the invisible God, became aManifestation. That One of whom “the whole family in heavenand earth is named”; sharing the glory and honour equallywith the Father, on a throne in the heaven-lies. Milton and othersbelieve that the presence of this Ma [...]