By Shannon Marshall

Dana Carvey while on the show Saturday Night Live used to portray the character, the Church Lady. The Church Lady skit involved her interviewing various guest. While interviewing these guest, anything that was not good and decent she would loudly attribute it to evil, as she would shout out the name, Satan. Flip Wilson used to say anything that he did wrong, “the devil made him do it.” Who is Satan?

The word Satan is the transliteration of the Hebrew word for “adversary.” You put the Hebrew letter “He” in front of the word and it gives it the definite article, “the adversary.” In the New Testament the Greek word Satanas. It is usually transliterated as Satan in English. In the Book of Job, he is the one who’s task was to roam the earth and seek out acts of persons to be reported adversely to God.

Satan is the prince of evil spirits, an enemy of God and Jesus. Satan takes the visible form of an angel of light. He looks nothing like how we often depict him as a human-like being with red skin, hooves, horns, and carrying a pitchfork. He often appears as one who talks of goodness and good intentions. He most often first appears as anything but bad.

Satan aims to oppose God and to hinder God’s rule in our lives. He uses temptation and deception to get people to disobey God’s commandments. Satan wants us to sin. He even tempted Jesus, “Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted…” (Matthew 4: 1) Satan attempts to deceive us into believing wrong is right and by doing the wrong we will achieve the greater good.

Satan is known by many names and titles in the Bible. Names used for Satan: the devil, Lucifer, the great dragon, the tempter, the accuser, a thief, a murderer, and a liar. Satan is a powerful evil force. But the Bible is clear that God is in control, and all evil will be defeated when Jesus returns. “And He said to them, “I was watching Satan fall from Heaven like lightning.” (Luke 10: 17). “And the devil who had deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire…” (Revelation 20: 10).