Lucifer's Roles: A Literary Composite of the Antichrist

By Theodore Lyons

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• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Nov 14, 2006
• ISBN: 9781469108889

Theodore Lyons

Theodore Lyons majored in English at Illinois Wesleyan University and edited for several journals. His other books include 91 Gordon Street and Two Occult Tales.

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Lucifer’s Roles

A Literary Composite

of the Antichrist

Theodore Lyons

Copyright © 2006 by Theodore Lyons.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

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Contents

Introduction

The Old Testament

The New Testament

Commentary

Conclusion

Bibliography

Is this the Region, this the Soil, the Clime,

Said then the lost Arch-Angel, this the seat

That we must change for Heav’n, this mournful gloom

For that celestial light? Be it so, since he

Who now is Sovran can dispose and bid

What shall be right: fardest from him is best

Whom reason hath equall’d, force hath made supreme

Above his equals. Farewell happy Fields

Where Joy forever dwells: Hail horrors, hail

Infernal world, and thou profoundest Hell

Receive thy new Possessor: One who brings

A mind not to be chang’d by Place or Time,

The mind is its own place, and in itself

Can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n. (Book I, 242-55)

Though Heav’n be shut,

And Heav’n’s high Arbitrator sit secure

In his own strength, this place may lie expos’d

The utmost border of his Kingdom, left

To their defense who hold it: here perhaps

Some advantageous act may be achiev’d

By sudden onset, either with Hell fire

To waste his whole Creation, or possess

All as our own, and drive as we were driven,

The puny inhabitants, or if not drive,

Seduce them to our Party, that thir God

May prove thir foe, and with repenting hand

Abolish his own works. (Book II, 358-70)

John Milton, Paradise Lost

Introduction

The idea for this book developed literally out of thin air. In 1994, I had a dream in which Edgar Cayce said, Write a book. You’re fourth or fifth book. At that time, I was reading a lot about Cayce and writing my first novel in which I used some of the material about him. I had no idea that I would ever write a second book, much less four or five. During a psychic reading in 2001, I was told, Jesus says you are becoming quite knowledgeable about the Bible. Inexplicably, my only thought at the time was his teaching that the weeds sown by an enemy in a wheat field shouldn’t be pulled up, or they could uproot the wheat; it is best, Jesus said, to wait until the harvest, when the weeds can be safely uprooted and burned (Matthew 13:30). This is an allegory for humanity and judgment day. Granted, I had read the Old Testament three times and the New Testament five times, which is considerable but is probably nothing compared to the number of times that it is read, say, by priests, ministers, and lifelong students of Scripture. Edgar Cayce reportedly read the Bible every year for 12 years and then had an angelic vision of a woman who told him that his prayers had been answered and asked what she could do for him. He answered that he wanted most to help other people, especially sick children. Reading the entire Bible in a year is an impressive feat in and of itself, much less reading it every year for as long as Cayce did. When I considered writing Lucifer’s Roles (my fourth book), I was skeptical about what I would find and what I could do with the material, for what do we really know, or care to know, about Lucifer (Satan) that isn’t a lot of Hollywood pabulum served up to the gullible public? I hardly knew where to begin. I have often heard a sort of adage, Be careful what you wish for—you may get your wish. I have also heard people say, You may not like what you find—which has serious overtones presently, given the escalating violence and war in the Middle East.

In the following chapters, the main biblical passages about Lucifer are presented and analyzed in order to characterize his roles, not merely in the Bible, but in the social order, because he is generally believed by Jews and Christians to exist. Necessary dialogue has been quoted verbatim, whereas some verses have been abridged to facilitate reading. This portrait is augmented by commentary from pertinent sources, such as Dialogues with the Devil, channeled by Taylor Caldwell in the way that she wrote many of her books on subjects about which she had no conscious knowledge; and Isaac B. Singer’s Satan in Goray, based on events surrounding the gruesome slaughter of 100,000 Jews in and around Goray, Poland, in the 17th century. The delusion and madness during this period in Goray prefigure that of Salem, Mass., in 1692, when wealthy property owners were hung allegedly for witchcraft so their assets could be seized by the town’s magistrates, the true perpetrators of evil who sanctioned murder—the epitome of hypocrisy and sanctimony.

In The Search for a Soul, Jess Stearn recounted author Taylor Caldwell’s numerous entranced conversations, induced by hypnosis and confirmed by psychics. Stearn recapitulated anecdotes from some of her 37 lifetimes on earth, including her life as the mother of Mary Magdalene, the beloved of Jesus; and her later sojourn as assistant to St. Paul, whose life she describes in Great Lion of God. In her first lifetime, Caldwell was the Atlantean empress Salustra; this forms the basis of her and Jess Stearn’s collaborative novel The Romance of Atlantis, which she originally wrote in 1912 at the age of 12. The story includes discussion of solar power and atomic fission, which of course hadn’t been discovered yet, and concludes with her and several of her countrymen being spared during the great flood in the time of Noah when God (or Satan, acting on God’s orders) sunk Atlantis. Just before the final storm presaging the demise of Atlantis, foreboding foreigners, probably Jews, warn and exhort the Atlanteans to worship the one God of Israel, whose wrath will otherwise devastate them. Stearn wrote in The Search for a Soul that Caldwell’s abuses of authority as the Atlantean empress Salustra cost her dearly: it took her another 37 lifetimes, some involving horrific suffering, to make up for her misleading influences in Atlantis. In one of her abbreviated past lives, as a teenage scullery maid to English novelist George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans), Caldwell was falsely accused of theft and was condemned to a workhouse, where conditions were so unbearable that she hung herself. In yet another aborted lifetime as a teenage scullery maid in England, she bled to death after being gang-raped by a brutal mob of drunken thugs.

Other important reference material, either because it was determined to be false or doesn’t add to our biblical knowledge of Satan, was excluded from the commentary presented here. For example, the accounts in Aldous Huxley’s The Devils of Loudun, about the well-publicized cases of diabolic possession in a French convent in 1634, were found by Huxley, among others, to be spurious and dubious at best and pockmarked with fakery at their worst. Tragically, however, the disturbing incidents in Loudun resulted in the death of Urbain Grandier, an innocent priest who was burned at the stake on the basis of false accusations, which probably were fabricated to attract attention. William Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist, although based on an actual case of diabolic possession involving a boy in St. Louis, was also not addressed at length because possession and exorcism are well covered in the New Testament. However, Blatty’s Fr. Merrin rightly concludes that, whatever Satan’s attack may be, it is indeed psychological; which is consistent with Satan’s own words in Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost, an inspired masterpiece that Milton produced despite his blindness and originally published in 1667. This is painfully obvious in Satan’s annihilation of Job, precipitating his crisis of faith and what reads like a nervous breakdown. Regarding discussion of demonic possession in the commentary, exception was given to the cases described in the Edgar Cayce Encyclopedia of Healing because they were treated by methods other than exorcism.

The Old Testament

Genesis

On the sixth day of creation, God commands man to Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground (1:28). God hereby gives man the right to rule over Satan, if in fact Satan were really the serpent in the Garden of Eden, since serpents move on the ground. In Revelation, John says, The great dragon was hurled down—that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray (12:9). The serpent is intelligent, able to hear and speak, and craftier than the other wild animals that God created. Since it is generally believed that God is omniscient, and because God created this serpent, God at least had an idea that the serpent would tempt Eve.

The serpent asks Eve, Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’? (3:1).

Eve replies, We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die’ (3:2-3). Here the serpent is only pretending not to know too much about God’s command to Adam and Eve not to eat from the tree of knowledge. On the other hand, how did the serpent know anything about it at all? Either the serpent overheard God speaking to Adam, or the serpent is also omniscient, since Eve hadn’t divulged what God said until after the serpent questioned her about it.

The serpent replies, You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil (3:4-5).

After Adam confesses eating the fruit from the tree of knowledge that Eve had given him, God questions Eve about it. She replies, The serpent deceived me, and I ate (3:13).

God says to the serpent, Cursed are you above all the livestock and all the wild animals! You will crawl on your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life. And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel (3:14-15). Here again, man will rule over and destroy the serpent, or Satan, if the serpent is Satan. Since the serpent did not actually strike Eve, we must conclude that there are other forms of evil besides murder and poisoning; for instance, God classifies simple trickery and deception as forms of evil, punishable by destruction.

The price of Eve’s infidelity to God’s command is high. God says to her, I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you. God here explicitly states that a married woman will desire her husband, which may mean any husband—whether brutal, false, or drunken—and despite all that he will rule over her (3:16).

To Adam, God says, Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat of it,’ Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return (3:17-19). Man is thus cursed not for accidentally eating forbidden fruit, which might have been laying on the ground, but for his misdeed as a result of listening to his wife.

God concludes, The man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever. (3:22). It isn’t clear who God means by the phrase one of us. Does he mean the serpent? Humanity’s punishment for the paradisaical couple’s infraction is everlasting: although through Adam and Eve, man inherited God’s knowledge of good and evil, God took away man’s option to live forever in the same body. Hence, man is destined to decay and die. God furthermore banishes Adam and Eve, and thus mankind, from the Garden of Eden, where they presumably did not have to toil for their food. They are now forced to work the ground from which they were given form.

Job

The angels and Satan present themselves before the Lord, who says to Satan, Where have you come from? (1:7)

Satan answers, From roaming through the earth and going back and forth in it (1:7).

The Lord says to Satan, Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil (1:8).

Does Job fear God for nothing? asks Satan (1:9). Have you not put a hedge around him and his household and everything he has? You have blessed the work of his hands, so that his flocks and herds are spread throughout the land (1:10). But stretch out your hand and strike everything he has, and he will surely curse you to your face (1:11).

The Lord replies, Very well, then, everything he has is in your hands, but on the man himself do not lay a finger (1:12). Here, it is evident that God can use Satan as an instrument of destruction, for God himself cannot or will not perpetrate evil or destruction for evil purposes. Satan, executing the divine will in this instance, cannot be held responsible for the devastation that he perpetrates.

Later, when Job’s sons and daughters are feasting, a messenger comes and says to Job, The oxen were plowing and the donkeys were grazing nearby, and the Sabeans attacked and carried them off. They put the servants to the sword, and I am the only one who has escaped to tell you! (1:15-16)

Another messenger comes to say, The fire of God fell from the sky and burned up the sheep and the servants, and I am the only one who has escaped to tell you! (1:16)

A third messenger comes to say, The Chaldeans formed three raiding parties and swept down on your camels and carried them off. They put the servants to the sword, and I am the only one who has escaped to tell you! (1:17)

Yet another messenger comes to declare, Your sons and daughters were feasting and drinking wine at the oldest brother’s house, when suddenly a mighty wind swept in from the desert and struck the four corners of the house. It collapsed on them and they are dead, and I am the only one who has escaped to tell you! (1:18-19)

Upon hearing of these disasters, Job tears his robe, shaves his head, falls to the ground in worship, and says: Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will depart. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; may the name of the Lord be praised (1:20-21). Job did not sin in charging God with wrongdoing.

Once again, the angels and Satan present themselves before the Lord, who says to Satan, Where have you come from?

Satan answers, From roaming through the earth and going back and forth in it (2:2).

The Lord then says to Satan, Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil. And he still maintains his integrity, though you incited me against him to ruin him without any reason (2:3). This implies that with good reason, God would signal the destructive forces to ruin a man.

Skin for skin! Satan replies, adding, A man will give all he has for his own life (2:4). But stretch out your hand and strike his flesh and bones, and he will surely curse you to your face (2:5).

The Lord answers, Very well, then, he is in your hands; but you must spare his life (2:6). Here, it must be concluded that God and Satan occasionally challenge each other and test certain individuals.

Satan then afflicts Job with painful sores from head to foot. Job scrapes himself with a piece of broken pottery while he sits among the ashes (2:7-8).

His wife then says to him, Are you still holding on to your integrity? Curse God and die! (2:9)

Job replies, You are talking like a foolish woman. Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble? In all this, Job did not sin by anything he said (2:10).

Job’s three friends—Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar, hearing of Job’s troubles, go to comfort him. Hardly recognizing Job, they weep, tear their robes, and sprinkle dust on their heads. They sit on the ground with him for a week but do not speak to Job because of his great suffering (2:11-13).

Job then curses the day of his birth: May the day of my birth perish, and the night it was said, ‘A boy is born!’ That day—may it turn to darkness; may God above not care about it; may no light shine upon it. May darkness and deep shadow claim it once more; may a cloud settle over it; may blackness overwhelm its light. That night—may thick darkness seize it; may it not be included among the days of the year nor be entered in any of the months. May that night be barren; may no shout of joy be heard in it. May those who curse days curse that day, those who are ready to rouse Leviathan. May its morning stars become dark; may it wait for daylight in vain and not see the first rays of dawn, for it did not shut the doors of the womb on me to hide trouble from my eyes. Why did I not perish at birth, and die as I came from the womb? Why were there knees to receive me and breasts that I might be nursed? For now I would be lying down in peace; I would be asleep and at rest with kings and counselors of the earth, who built for themselves places now lying in ruins, with rulers who had gold, who filled their houses with silver. Or why was I not hidden in the ground like a stillborn child, like an infant who never saw the light of day? There the wicked cease from turmoil, and there the weary are at rest. Captives also enjoy their ease; they no longer hear the slave driver’s shout. The small and the great are there, and the slave is freed from his master. Why is light given to those in misery, and life to the bitter of soul, to those who long for death that does not come, who search for it more than for hidden treasure, who are filled with gladness and rejoice when they reach the grave? Why is life given to a man whose way is hidden, whom God has hedged in? For sighing comes to me instead of food; my groans pour out like water. What I feared has come upon me; what I dreaded has happened to me. I have no peace, no quietness; I have no rest, but only turmoil (3:1-26).

By cursing the day of his birth, Job doubts God’s wisdom in allowing him to be born. Having lost everything, Job is ready to give up and die in return for freedom from suffering. His biggest difficulty, however, is simply that he always had everything he wanted and needed and never knew torment or evil until Satan demanded it of God. Thus, Satan has indirectly inspired Job to understand humility, poverty, and forbearance—what most people learn from childhood because they have never known affluence and have always known want, pain, or hunger. Can a man who has never suffered be truly righteous? Satan questioned whether God had put a hedge around Job and his assets to protect him. Job now accuses God of putting a hedge around him to prevent his release from suffering.

Eliphaz replies: "If someone ventures a word with you, will you be impatient? But who can keep from speaking? Think how you have instructed many, how you have strengthened feeble hands. Your words have supported those who stumbled; you have strengthened faltering knees. But now trouble comes to you, and you are discouraged; it strikes you, and you are dismayed. Should not your piety be your confidence and your blameless ways your hope? Consider now: Who, being innocent, has ever perished? Where were the upright ever destroyed? As I have observed, those who plow evil and those who sow trouble reap it. At the breath of God they are destroyed; at the blast of his anger they perish. The lions may roar and growl, yet the teeth of the great lions are broken. The lion perishes for lack of prey, and the cubs of the lioness are scattered. A word was secretly brought to me, my ears caught a whisper of it. Amid disquieting dreams in the night, when deep sleep falls on men, fear and trembling seized me and made all my bones shake. A spirit glided past my face, and the hair on my body stood on end. It stopped, but I could not tell what it was. A form stood before my eyes, and I heard a hushed voice: ‘Can a mortal be more righteous than God? Can a man be more pure than his Maker? If God places no trust in his servants, if he charges his angels with error, how much more those who live in houses of clay, whose foundations are in the dust, who are crushed more readily than a moth! Between dawn and dusk they are broken to pieces; unnoticed, they perish forever. Are not the cords of their tent pulled up, so that they die without wisdom?’ (4:1-21)

Eliphaz questions how Job could counsel the less fortunate and yet be so ill-prepared to handle his own trials and tribulations. Was Job sincere in his counsel? Has Job forgotten his previous devotion to God and adherence to his commandments? Can Job be so righteous that he deserves not to know trouble and misfortune? If God can find fault with and punish an angel, such as Satan, will God not visit disasters upon mankind? If Job really had cause for concern here, would he not already be dead and none the wiser, as Eliphaz suggests?

Eliphaz resumes: Call if you will, but who will answer you? To which of the holy ones will you turn? Resentment kills a fool, and envy slays the simple. I myself have seen a fool taking root, but suddenly his house was cursed. His children are far from safety, crushed in court without a defender. The hungry consume his harvest, taking it even from among thorns, and the thirsty pant after his wealth. For hardship does not spring from the soil, nor does trouble sprout from the ground. Yet man is born to trouble as surely as sparks fly upward. But if it were I, I would appeal to God; I would lay my cause before him. He performs wonders that cannot be fathomed, miracles that cannot be counted. He bestows rain on the earth; he sends water upon the countryside. The lowly he sets on high, and those who mourn are lifted to safety. He thwarts the plans of the crafty, so that their hands achieve no success. He catches the wise in their craftiness, and the schemes of the wily are swept away. Darkness comes upon them in the daytime; at noon they grope as in the night. He saves the needy from the sword in their mouth; he saves them from the clutches of the powerful. So the poor have hope, and injustice shuts its mouth. Blessed is the man whom God corrects; so do not despise the discipline of the Almighty. For he wounds, but he also binds up; he injures, but his hands also heal. From six calamities he will rescue you; in seven no harm will befall you. In famine he will ransom you from death, and in battle from the stroke of the sword. You will be protected from the lash of the tongue, and need not fear when destruction comes. You will laugh at destruction and famine, and need not fear the beasts of the earth. For you will have a covenant with the stones of the field, and the wild animals will be at peace with you. You will know that your tent is secure; you will take stock of your property and find nothing missing. You will know that your children will be many, and your descendants like the grass of the earth. You will come to the grave in full vigor, like sheaves gathered in season. We have examined this, and it is true. So hear it and apply it to yourself (5:1-27).

Eliphaz essentially counsels Job that all is not lost, but that he must not let bitterness destroy him. Everyone faces trouble at some point in his life, but the righteous retain their faith in God and learn obedience through suffering, even as the Christ would later show. They will triumph over sorrow, and their losses will be restored, but in the grip of despair and hopelessness, recovery always seems like an impossible fantasy. This is the ultimate purpose of Satan’s attack—directed at God through Job—for when all is well, it is easy to believe in God. Only the righteous maintain their faith when all is not well, for they know that God will redeem them and upend the wicked.

Job replies: "If only my anguish could be weighed and all my misery be placed on the scales! It would surely outweigh the sand of the seas—no wonder my words have been impetuous. The arrows of the Almighty are in me, my spirit drinks in their poison; God’s terrors are marshaled against me. Does a wild donkey bray when it has grass, or an ox bellow when it has fodder? Is tasteless food eaten without salt, or is there flavor in the white of an egg? I refuse to touch it; such food makes me ill. Oh, that I might have my request, that God would grant what I hope for, that God would be willing to crush me, to let loose his hand and cut me off! Then I would still have this consolation—my joy in unrelenting pain—that I had not denied the words of the Holy One. What strength do I have, that I should still hope? What prospects, that I should be patient? Do I have the strength of stone? Is my flesh bronze? Do I have any power to help myself, now that success has been driven from me? A despairing man should have the devotion of his friends, even though he forsakes the fear of the Almighty. But my brothers are as undependable as intermittent streams, as the streams that overflow when darkened by thawing ice and swollen with melting snow, but that cease to flow in the dry season, and in the heat vanish from their channels. Caravans turn aside from their routes; they go up into the wasteland and perish. The caravans of Tema look for water, the traveling merchants of Sheba look in hope. They are