by Clifford Goldstein
In the 1970s, comedian Flip Wilson played a preacher’s wife named Geraldine who, against her husband’s wishes, bought an expensive dress. When asked why, Geraldine declared, “The devil made me buy this dress.” Since then, Wilson’s modified line “the devil made me do it” has become an iconic phrase in pop culture.
Suppose it isn’t funny, though? Suppose the devil is real and, in fact, tempts people to do things that they know they shouldn’t?
But, really, in our day and age, an era of science and technology, who can take the idea of the devil—other than as a symbol, as a metaphor, as an outdated leftover image from a benighted time—seriously? “We cannot,” wrote theologian Rudolph Bultmann forty years ago “use electric lights and radios and, in the event of illness, avail ourselves of modern medical and clinical means and at the same time believe in the spirit and wonder world of the New Testament.”1
Radios and electric lights? How about the James Webb Space Telescope, iPhones, and quantum physics? With such science and technology, who can believe in the devil or in the “wonder world of the New Testament”—especially now?
This article, however, will show that it’s precisely because of such things as electric lights, the James Webb Space Telescope, iPhones, and quantum physics that our generation should, more than any other in history, seriously consider the reality of the devil.
Here’s why.
The edge of creation?
Humans have always marveled at the cosmos, even if they little understood it. For 2,000 years, Aristotle’s model—an immobile earth at the center of 55 vast crystalline spheres, in which all the stars and planets, in perfect circular motion, orbited the earth—dominated the Western world’s conception of the universe. In this model, the creation extended no farther than Saturn, the edge of existence. When, however, Galileo (1564–1642) pointed his crude telescope into the heavens, our conception of the universe began to radically change—especially about its vastness.
As telescopes got bigger and better, the universe seemed larger and larger. At the beginning of the twentieth century, most people thought that our galaxy, the Milky Way, composed the entire creation, an idea that today seems medieval. Now, with such technology as the James Webb Space Telescope, which, a million miles from Earth, scans the heavens, the cosmos is seen to be incredibly vast—billions of light-years across. Our imaginations, even piggybacking on complex math, can barely grasp it.
The universe is teeming with stars and planets too. Astronomers estimate that there are hundreds of billions of galaxies (some put the number in the trillions), each with about 100 billion stars. And that’s only what we have been able to see so far. Telescopes also reveal exoplanets, planets that orbit distant stars in the same way that Earth orbits the sun.
And so—do we think that we are alone in the cosmos now that we know it extends far beyond Saturn? It’s no wonder that, for decades, NASA has been engaging in astrobiology research—a “search for life beyond Earth.” And the SETI Institute (search for extra-terrestrial intelligence) has, since 1985, been doing just that—searching for extraterrestrial intelligence. There could be, SETI speculates, “as many as 300 million potentially habitable planets in our galaxy.”2
We’re not alone
It’s kind of ironic, though: NASA and SETI have been scanning the heavens, all in order to find life beyond Earth, while the Bible has not only told us about life beyond Earth but depicts what some of that life is like. The Bible offers these descriptions:
“We do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 6:12, NKJV).
“For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him” (Colossian 1:16, NKJV).
“To the intent that now the manifold wisdom of God might be made known by the church to the principalities and powers in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 3:10).
Scripture’s most explicit depiction of life beyond our atmospheric borders is in Revelation: “And war broke out in heaven: Michael and his angels fought with the dragon; and the dragon and his angels fought, but they did not prevail, nor was a place found for them in heaven any longer. So the great dragon was cast out, that serpent of old, called the Devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world; he was cast to the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.” “Therefore rejoice, O heavens, and you who dwell in them! Woe to the inhabitants of the earth and the sea! For the devil has come down to you, having great wrath, because he knows that he has a short time” (Revelation 12:7–9, 12).
Not only does extraterrestrial life exist, but some of it has come down to earth, and not in UFOs, either. They don’t need them.
Spooky action at a distance
A preacher stood before a church, an iPhone in hand, and told everyone to be silent. After a few seconds, he opened a radio app, and music filled the room.
“Where,” he asked, “did this sound originate from? Not from the phone. The phone merely picked up the radio waves, which are in the air right now, all around us, but our senses cannot detect them.”
He was right. How many millions of the world’s cell phone calls are in the air around you at this very moment, as real as the light that enables you to read these words? Yet without cell phones to do what your ears, eyes, skin, nose, and mouth can’t, you’d never sense any of the calls, texts, or photos streaming around you. Nor do your senses reveal to you the thousands of muons and the trillions of neutrinos that pass through your body every second.
What about electricity? It’s an awesome but invisible force. We can’t see it, even if we look at uninsulated wires carrying enough power to run a town. But its results are real and dramatic.
In addition to all this, quantum physics, which deals with the atomic world, has shown that, under certain circumstances, atomic particles can communicate with each other at speeds faster than light, no matter how far apart the particles are. Though the amazing phenomenon is called quantum entanglement, Albert Einstein referred to it a “spooky action at a distance,” and however much he wanted to disprove it, science has shown that it’s real. Recently, the Chinese, using satellites, worked with entangled particles hundreds of miles apart!
The great controversy
The point? Between what science and technology have shown us about the potential for life elsewhere in the cosmos and what it has shown us about powerful invisible forces, some all around us—we, of all generations, should be the most open to the biblical teaching of supernatural cosmic forces operating invisibly here on earth. Sure, neither billions of galaxies nor quantum entanglement prove the biblical worldview true; what they do prove is that we, on our tiny planet and with our limited senses, barely grasp what’s really going on. And what’s really going on is a cosmic battle between good and evil, between Christ and Satan, and each one of us is involved, whether we like it or not.
It has been called “the great controversy” or the “cosmic warfare worldview.” Whatever the name, from the interplay of nations to the quiet struggles in our souls, who hasn’t felt the reality of this battle? Should I lie to my friends? What about the sexual advances that this married woman at work is making toward me? Should I steal from my work, especially because the place is already so corrupt? Crime, sickness, moral dilemmas, natural catastrophes, war, pestilence, famine, misery, and death—our world is reeling from this very real battle.
Poet T. S. Eliot wrote:
“The world turns and the world changes,
But one thing does not change.
In all of my years, one thing does not change.
However you disguise it, this thing does not change:
The perpetual struggle of Good and Evil.”3
Even hard-core atheist Friedrich Nietzsche could write: “Let us conclude. The two opposing values, ‘good and bad,’ ‘good and evil,’ have been engaged in a fearful struggle on earth for thousands of years.”4
From Satan challenging God and afflicting Job (Job 1; 2) to Satan tempting Christ in the wilderness (Luke 4:1–14) to Satan entering Judas (Luke 22:3) to Satan facing final punishment at the end of time (Revelation 20:10), the Bible again and again depicts the reality of Satan—and almost always in the context of this great controversy.
Christ’s victory
The Bible says that Jesus “disarmed principalities and powers, [and] He made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them” (Colossians 2:15). At the cross, Christ’s victory over Satan, over the forces of evil, was secured. As the Bible says: “Inasmuch then as the children have partaken of flesh and blood, He [Jesus] Himself likewise shared in the same, that through death He might destroy him who had the power of death, that is, the devil” (Hebrews 2:14). And, in His triumph, we have ours “Thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Corinthians 15:57). By faith, we can partake in the fruit of His victory—eternal life on a new earth, one without the great controversy that makes life so hard for us.
Satan is real, Jesus is real, and the great controversy is real, and with what modern science and technology have shown us, we of all generations should take this as a reality. Yes, Satan is still alive. He “walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour” (1 Peter 5:8)—which explains so much of the evil and turmoil in the world and in our own lives. But his ultimate demise is as certain as our ultimate redemption in Jesus if we stay connected to Jesus by faith.
1 Rudolf Bultmann, New Testament and Mythology, and Other Basic Writings, ed. and trans. Schubert M. Ogden (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984), 4.
2 “How Many Habitable Planets Are out There?” SETI Institute, October 29, 2020, https://www.seti.org/press-release/how-many-habitable-planets-are-out-there.
3 T. S. Eliot, The Complete Poems and Plays: 1909–1950(New York: Harcourt Brace, 1980), 98.
4 Friedrich Nietzsche,On the Genealogy of Morals (New York: Random House, 1967), 52.
