Illuminati

By Brandon Baranowski

Brandon Baranowski's Illuminati brings to life the tales behind religion like no other. This controversial book explores the folklore behind modern day religious ideals and illuminates the fictional mythologies from fact, separating scripture from historical doctrine. From Satan to God,creation to Doom's Day, Baranowski leaves no leaf unturned. Prepare to explore the scripture like never before.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Apr 13, 2011
• ISBN: 9781257620593

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THE NAME OF EVIL

The world has been locked in an eternal battle for centuries of good versus evil. Many people would debate that certain kings, lord, politicians, Vlad III, Hitler and so on have been influenced to do evil by some hidden force whose whole design is to plague humanity. Thus evil produces evil. This entire evil force is often depicted as being driven by one entity that appears to have a firmer foot on Earth than that divine light in which we come from. But who is this entity with so much hate and lust for destruction? Is Satan, the devil, Lucifer or whatever you choose to call him, a force to be feared or a psychodramatic over dramatization of perhaps a tulpa in the fore walls of our minds?

Any Christian church attended today will 'confirm' the existence of Satan. When asked how these clergymen know about this evil being they will turn to their Bible and quote some line with the word Satan or the devil. To anyone who doesn't believe in the Bible, this obviously would not be verifiable justification and if you do believe in the Bible, is it still a credible mean to believe in a monarch of evil? Now, I have jumped to the assumption that this being is indeed a male and not a female or nonsexual, which is due to the common referral to Satan as being male (and in no part a sexist remark on my behalf). As I move along you will see that there are a lot of common referrals that perhaps shouldn't be so common.

When studying the Bible, it is best to start at the beginning with the Old Testament, which is revered in not only the Christian language but in Judaism, Islam and a few others as well. The first real case in the Bible of something being wrong is when the serpent tempts Eve to eat from the forbidden tree of knowledge. There is no reference to any sort of nonphysical being influencing the serpent to do thus, it just merely states that the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made (Genesis 3:1).

So was this an influence of the Lord of Darkness or just the random whim of one of God's sinless creatures? Still in Genesis, there is the story of Noah, a righteous man. God is so displeased with his creation of man that he is going to flood the Earth and drown that very creation. Man had filled the Earth with violence. Nowhere does it mention some sort of being influencing man to do unjust acts, instead they do so of their own accord. The Earth is then purged of its vile, and Noah becomes the new age Adam.

Man is known for his inevitable corruption over time, but oddly enough, there is no mention of Satan until 1 Chronicles, half way through the Old Testament. The word Satan in the Old Testament was ha-satan, which in Hebrew means adversary⁸ and can be assumed to mean the adversary of God. Satan is derived from Shayatin which in Islamic-Arabian folklore were more powerful than usual Djinns. A djinn (or genie) was a supernatural entity which possessed free will and often led men astray. Due to the ill intent of a select number of these djinns, they were sometimes referred to as 'devils.' The most famous shayatin can be found in the Qur'an (the Holy Book of Islam), which tells a story of a djinn named Iblis who refused to bow down to Adam at God's command.

In the Old Testament, Satan could have been several different people, and the reader is not exactly sure of what he is or where he came from. In 2 Samuel (19:22) David calls the sons of Zeruiah his 'adversaries' and in 1 Kings (11:14) the Lord raised up against Solomon an 'adversary,' Hadad the Edomite. Perhaps Satan is just a word that wasn't translated along with the rest of the Bible in order to create some sort of fictitious super villain for the world to direct their anger and fear; or could he be something more?

In Job, Satan appears before the Lord and God seems to be as confused by him as we are, asking Where have you come from? If God is omnipotent then would he not know of Satan's presence no matter where he was? Or perhaps God only sees his doing on Earth for he is the absence of God and even God himself cannot see into the abyss. Either way, it is often said that God cannot be in the presence of sin and this is a perfect example where he not only is in the presence of it, but doesn't even shun it. Some beliefs have beings whose whole creation are to test man, so it would also be a safe assumption that Satan is just doing his job (perhaps there is a pun there), like in Numbers (22:32) when god sends an angel to oppose Balaam.

Satan is then again seen briefly in Zechariah, where his relation with God seems a little more hostile, and then he seems to disappear until the New Testament. The New Testament is riddled with the battle of God versus Satan. Satan has gained such a strong footing on Earth that God must enact his ultimate plan of sending his only son (well, maybe not his only if you count all of humanity, the angels, and any other being in existence, but born from the only woman God personally impregnated) in the flesh to teach us and thus receive a horrifically painful death. In the years since Malachi, has God lost his grip on humanity that much or was the church losing control over the people? Either way, the reader is presented with a new insurgence of our mighty antihero.

The church teaches that Satan was the most beautiful angel God had ever created. He became prideful, converted angels against God, and was cast out of heaven by the Archangels. That's a pretty epic tale to preach and yet there appears to be no mention of this in the Bible? True, there is the mighty battle of Revelation, but is Revelation not the tale of days to come? It's John's visions of the end of the world as we know it, Armageddon, where the final battle for the souls of man will be fought not only on Earth but in Heaven. Here Revelation states the great dragon was hurled down the ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray and really is the only look into who or what Satan really is. Here he is said to be a great serpent, a dragon, and not some narcissistic angel hell bent on persuading man in his way. However, Revelation clearly cannot be attributed to the past and creation of Satan because it has not happened yet! Although in Luke (10:18) Jesus tells his messengers he saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. Is this a hint into the origin of the devil? Another explanation could be that Jesus was omnipotent like his father, and therefore time did not really exist in his mind.

The devil is derived from the Greek word diabolos meaning slanderer or accuser ⁵ and is never once capitalized in the Bible. This means it is more of