Know Thy Enemy – Part 8: Tools of the Devil

This will be the last post in the current series examining the character and career of the primary antagonist of our existential narrative, and our adversary in spiritual warfare – the being called “Satan”.  In the last two posts, we looked at Satan’s partners in crime, the many fallen angels who rebelled with him against God and have joined him in his vain attempt to thwart God’s plan.

In this final post, we will see that there is one other group that share the goals and aspirations of the fallen angels and act as their agents in a symbiotic relationship.  They are a group that is familiar to us because we’ve analyzed them before – human Mystics!

The goal of Mystics is to rule over humanity and recreate Eden on earth without (or in defiance to) God.  Since their goals are so closely aligned, its not surprising that they would strike up a partnership with their supernatural cohorts.

The Mystics of Spirit rule over men by claiming to have an association with “the gods”. They keep their position by invoking fear of said gods and have maintained their influence through history by being the keepers of these “arcane secrets”.

And that’s all well and good, however I admittedly left something out of my original posts that can be brought up now.  Which is the question, how could Mystics maintain this façade over any moderately intelligent persons for so long based only on their empty claims?

Dumb, superstitious primitives

One explanation (and the one we probably default to) is to assume that the ancient masses were just not as smart and sophisticated as we are today.  Basically, the knuckle-dragging morons of the ancient world were so backwards and superstitious that they took theses charlatans at their word when they claimed that sacrificing your first born under the full moon at midnight would assure a bountiful crop next season.  Or that they could bring down fire from the gods on infidels.  But of course WE wouldn’t fall for that kind of stuff because we’re soooo much smarter.

But is the depiction of the ancients as drooling, sloped-forehead troglodytes really accurate?

Not so dumb (but still kind of superstitious) primitives

Lets keep in mind the fact that these are the same people who invented math, science, and language.  They built monuments such as the Great Pyramid and Stonehenge, which are structures of such precision, accuracy, and astrological/geological expertise that to this day we cannot duplicate them of figure out how they made them even with all of our sophisticated gadgets.

So if the ancients were not necessarily the rubes we think they were, how were the Mystics able to dupe them?  Well, I think it is highly likely that these was some actually truth in the Mystics’ claims.  Insofar as the fallen angels were given god-like regard, certain Mystics DID have a connection to them that they could use to convince the ancients.

Demonic special effects

If you get in front of the masses and SAY that you have the power to do the miraculous, you might get a few (or a lot of) suckers to believe you if you have enough charisma (I’m pretty sure that’s how our current president got elected – oops, I promised to keep politics out of this blog…).  But if you make those claims, AND give people an occasional demonstration of your supernatural connections, well your argument becomes exponentially more convincing.

The reason that otherwise intelligent folks in the past believed the Mystics is because they saw proof of their supernatural connections!  Remember, that at the end of the fourth dispensation, when God brought the 10 plagues on Egypt through Moses, the Mystics at Pharaoh’s court were able to duplicate the first two using their spiritual connection to the powerful fallen angelic “gods” who governed that empire!

The supernatural was an everyday occurrence

The occurrences of supernatural events are almost taken for granted in the Bible and other ancient texts.  The writers of these stories fully expected their readers to take them seriously when they presented narratives about floods, and plagues, and signs and wonders.

Not only were there physical demonstrations of power, the apocryphal Book of Enoch implies that fallen angels provided sophisticated knowledge of agriculture, medicine, astronomy, and industry to people of the Second Dispensation.  If this information was kept and guarded by the Mystics throughout the centuries, they could make use of it in very convincing ways.

For example, if the Mystics had (and kept secret) knowledge of the cycle of solar eclipses, they could tell people that “the gods will darken the Sun next Tuesday to show their displeasure!”  You can then imagine the reactions of the masses when the eclipse happened as predicted.

Dealing with the Devil

So how did this all work?  Well, starting with the Mother of Mystics (who may have had access to supernatural through the being who sired her son/husband), the connection to the supernatural could have been passed on to her various priests, who, when Babel was divided into nations, took their knowledge and connections with them into other societies as they spread throughout the globe.

In this mutually beneficial arrangement, the Mystics would get the power they desired to rule over men, and in return, the fallen angels would mortal aid in their endeavors to thwart the plan of God.  After all, its one thing for them to try to ruin God’s plan on their own, but its an even bigger slap in the face to have that plan opposed by some of the very creatures it is meant to benefit.

Thus, throughout the ages, certain men have engaged in Faustian deals with the gods of this world to gain incredible wealth, power, and influence, in exchange for their souls and allegiance.

Despite how incredible it sounds, its probably not as uncommon as one would think.  If you look just past the superficial façade of our society, stories abound about people taking spiritual short cuts to success. (I mean how else do you explain how incompetent politicians and talentless celebrities gain inexplicable wealth and influence?  I’m sure that when Satan flosses his teeth, chunks of Jimmy Fallon’s soul fly out).

Where did all the magic go?

So then, if all of this is true, it begs an obvious question – Why don’t we see overt supernatural shenanigans today?  Surely with common access to video equipment and the Internet, it wouldn’t be much of a chore to document some infidel getting char-broiled by a Mystic channeling “Moltar the god of fire”.  But instead all we get are the occasional fuzzy shot of a “UFO” or the silhouette of Big Foot ducking behind a ponderosa pine tree.

There are a few possible explanations:

1. The supernatural stuff only happens in uncivilized parts of the world where you can still find the occasional shaman turning people into frogs.  Maybe, but why is the western world immune?  Are fallen angels afraid of electricity and freeway traffic?
2. It still happens, but its kept secret by the current ruling Mystics who only trot out their tricks in hidden enclaves like Bohemian Grove.  This idea is touted by the conspiracy theorist, but despite whatever merit it may have, you still wonder why its kept so clandestine when Mystics of the past made a big show of it to aid their cause.
3. God is currently keeping things in check.  The Bible strongly implies that in our current dispensation (the sixth), God is actively restraining evil.  In the Sixth Dispensation, God resides in the hearts of believers on earth (obviously we’ll detail all this when we examine the Sixth Dispensation).  God’s active presence in the world is the restraining force that literally prevents all hell from breaking loose.  So Mystics and fallen angels are not free to operate as they once did.  However, when this current dispensation ends, the Bible makes it clear that demonic activity will ramp up exponentially…

If explanation #3 is correct.  It would be interesting to observe how the influence of evil in this world grows in proportion to the amount that God’s influence through His believers wanes…

Back to our regularly scheduled programming

There is a great deal more to say on the subject of Satan and his minions, but for now, we will end our look at the dark side here.  Its time to get back to out examination of the dispensations.

In the first four dispensations, God gave men fairly open-ended opportunities to chose Him over themselves.  With the failure of men to do so each time, it would seem that the only just thing for God to do would be to give men very specific examples of how things should be done – culminating with the ULTIMATE example of how to choose God over man.  The Fifth Dispensation begins next time…

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E. M.