Could Jesus be Satan?

[Zzyzx]

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According to the bible Satan was "cast down to Earth" – and later a "messiah" shows up claiming to know a great deal about "god", doing "miracles" (supernatural forms of magic), calling himself by the common name Jesus, and is accepted as being "god" (or "son of god") by followers.

Satan, according to lore, is credited with supernatural powers AND a lust for power, a great ego, a deceptive nature, and with being the epitome of evil. As such "he" could easily arrange a "virgin birth", could he not? With supernatural powers couldn't he also walk on water, feed multitudes from a lunchbox, turn water into wine, preach convincingly, and even arrange a "resurrection"?

Since all of that could be done by any competent supernatural being of great power, what is there to insure that Jesus and Satan are not the same being?

One might cite a bible story about Jesus and Satan being in the same place (atop a high mountain), but there were no known witnesses and there is no such mountain (from which all kingdoms of the Earth can be seen from a single point on a sphere). Thus, Satan could well have made up such a story (and in the role of Jesus, tell followers that it had happened – or have them informed by another source).

Couldn't ALL the events attributed to Jesus or God be the actions of a "Satan"? How can one tell for sure which supernatural entity produced what effects?

Couldn't "Satan" arrange for the bible to be written by worshipers / followers / believers? How can anyone be certain that they are not worshiping Satan.

What would be Satan's motivation to create a Jesus character and play the role of "the son of god"? EGO and a desire to be worshipped.

[MagusYanam]

I thought you meant to say Jesus would teach us to hate our parents....hate (180 degrees in contrast to love) as in that evil of malicious desire of wishing harm on our parents. So, my response would be absolutely not, because God calls us to such lofty transcendental level of love, that not only are we to love those who deserved to be loved but also those who don't deserve to be love, as in our enemies.

Oh no, not at all! I'm just saying that the passage in Luke has been very difficult for me to get my heart around, and I've struggled with it intellectually and emotionally. I do like the process-theology interpretation of it, that it mirrors Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac - a big part of love is 'letting go' and giving up control over what you love, and that following Christ involves a lot of 'letting go'.

In reading your responses I see I jumped the gun a bit. Please accept my apologies. I tend to read more into some posts than maybe what is there. I know I do it, I try not to, but danged if I don't keep doing it.

Again, I was wrong and I apologize, but please don't let others read this reply.

Don't worry about it, joey. I could have made it clearer where I was coming from with that. My point was merely that love is something people generally have to practise - I wasn't trying to claim that Christians were better at it than anyone else, either by grace or by works.

Part of the whole Christian mentality is Christians DO have the 'Grace of God', and they are denying that others do not. It is the whole very annoying 'Christians aren't perfect, just forgiven' attitude that implies that other people are do not not have 'grace' nor are they forgiven.

Come on, goat, you know me better than that!

I think one would have to be a fool not to see that God can bestow grace on anyone (and does!), and it would be bigoted and narrow-minded of me to see it only when it happens to Christians. I know the kind of attitude you're talking about, and it does annoy me when my fellow Christians display it, too, but that doesn't mean that it invalidates the concept of grace. Indeed, the idea that grace is specific ignores a large part of what grace actually means.

[Cathar1950]

They both have achieved god like status by the same believers.
It seems very little has been written in the Hebrew writing Christians call the OT about Satan and very little to even identify Satan as Lucifer or the Serpent which was the great Leviathan.
Jesus as the cosmis Christ or the result of OT prophesy and Satan are both mythological beings.

[Goat]

I thought you meant to say Jesus would teach us to hate our parents....hate (180 degrees in contrast to love) as in that evil of malicious desire of wishing harm on our parents. So, my response would be absolutely not, because God calls us to such lofty transcendental level of love, that not only are we to love those who deserved to be loved but also those who don't deserve to be love, as in our enemies.

Oh no, not at all! I'm just saying that the passage in Luke has been very difficult for me to get my heart around, and I've struggled with it intellectually and emotionally. I do like the process-theology interpretation of it, that it mirrors Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac - a big part of love is 'letting go' and giving up control over what you love, and that following Christ involves a lot of 'letting go'.

In reading your responses I see I jumped the gun a bit. Please accept my apologies. I tend to read more into some posts than maybe what is there. I know I do it, I try not to, but danged if I don't keep doing it.

Again, I was wrong and I apologize, but please don't let others read this reply.

Don't worry about it, joey. I could have made it clearer where I was coming from with that. My point was merely that love is something people generally have to practise - I wasn't trying to claim that Christians were better at it than anyone else, either by grace or by works.

Part of the whole Christian mentality is Christians DO have the 'Grace of God', and they are denying that others do not. It is the whole very annoying 'Christians aren't perfect, just forgiven' attitude that implies that other people are do not not have 'grace' nor are they forgiven.

Come on, goat, you know me better than that!

I think one would have to be a fool not to see that God can bestow grace on anyone (and does!), and it would be bigoted and narrow-minded of me to see it only when it happens to Christians. I know the kind of attitude you're talking about, and it does annoy me when my fellow Christians display it, too, but that doesn't mean that it invalidates the concept of grace. Indeed, the idea that grace is specific ignores a large part of what grace actually means.

Oh, I don't see the 'grace of god' attitude from you. I was commenting about the phrase the Maria used. It is one of my two pet peeves from the more proselyting section of the christianity.

[TMMaria]

Part of the whole Christian mentality is Christians DO have the 'Grace of God', and they are denying that others do not. It is the whole very annoying 'Christians aren't perfect, just forgiven' attitude that implies that other people are do not not have 'grace' nor are they forgiven.

OK, goat. Not sure what phrase annoyed you...or what implication you understood of that phrase...

Let's further clarify my use of the word "graces" vs. Grace is in a big capital name, Grace. Sorry about using capitals without attaching definition, it's my forgetting to take note of readers who do not understand words in the paradigm I do.

graces, as in gifts of sanctity, are given to anyone of us in the human family as God pleases. Nobody knows where the Spirit goes or where He blows...so that none may boast, such as the boast that only believers have it. But gifts of sanctity prepares us to receive what is greater then the graces themselfves...it's to receive the Holy Spirit, God Himself. Since God has nothing to do with sin, those who remain in original sin or those who are never been baptized by the Spirit may not ever receive God Himself. "What darkness has to do with light, fire with ice?" The temples of their soul lack the sanctification to receive God.

Any unbeliever certainly may possess great graces from God, so he is capable of great human love and be at the highest level of morality that the moral being can be, for example Buddha. God does allow such gifts to unbelievers so that us believers can have humility. However human love goes only so far as this lifetime. When death comes, there is separation, pain, and loss....and the greater the love, the greater the vulnerability to pain of loss.

Yet, in this world every couple-inove dream of True Love, the concept of "Forever Love", 'Love Always," "Eternal Love" inspires much poetry, music and aesthetic delight. A Love that nothing can separate.

To reach to that level of Divine Love...we have to have the Holy Spirit Himself, only possible if every stain of sin is washed from our souls and we attain sanctifying grace.

[TMMaria]

They both have achieved god like status by the same believers.

ok...an acceptable perception. But know the tree by its fruits. Since God is Good, Satan in his envy aim at destroying all that is good...so he set out to lead humanity to lies, fingerpointing (Eve sure laid the blame, so did Adam), envy (Cain killed Abel), hate, wickedness...brother enslaving brother, wars, destruction, lust, covetnous that led to murder... I mean Satan already got us where he wanted: Enslavement to sins and death. Why bother come a second time to teach us to love one another, take care of the least of our brothers and sisters, wash each other's feet...nonretaliation to violence, be kind, be charitable, be peacemaker....so forth and so on to produce all the fruits of goodness. And get this the best lesson of all which goes against human egoistic, prideful, me-first, self-preservational nature: to love is to sacrifice one's life for the one you love.

So a beautiful lesson for married couples in love: sacrificial love is the secret.

It seems very little has been written in the Hebrew writing Christians call the OT about Satan and very little to even identify Satan as Lucifer or the Serpent which was the great Leviathan.
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Very little? Not so, there's oh, an abundance, but sorry to run out of time...more on this later.

[TMMaria]

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Would Satan sacrifice himself on the cross for all of humanity? One attribute of love is sacrifice - could satan, who is evil, be sacrificial, therefore loving?

"Sacrifice himself on the cross" has no meaning to a supernatural being whose "death" is temporary. It would mean no more that a super being "Satan" did a sham death than for a super being "Jesus" to have done so -- if any such thing happened at all.

No one knows for certain that "sacrifice himself on the cross" by a super being happened in reality. Some believe stories in ancient writings by people promoting a new religion. Nothing outside their writings verifies the stories. Humans are known to be deceived or deceitful in promotion of ideas they favor – including religion.

Of course, a powerful and deceptive "Satan" could cause the "bible" to be written as though such a thing had happened, whether it had or not. No one would know if the story was real -- just as is true now. Some THINK they know, but that is "faith" rather than knowledge.

Nothing that has been said so far in this thread is anything that a clever "Satan" could not have managed. Therefore, no one knows if they are actually worshiping a "god" or a "devil".

Discernment is key, ZZZ. When you are not sleeping, perhaps we can together use our deductive reasoning to explore the statement: "Know the tree by its fruit."

Let's see, believers concept of God is that He is Good, Whom is the source from where all goodness and harmony comes...

Believers' concept of evil is a deprivation of goodness where goodness ought to be.

So if Satan did his works successfully at (evil) depriving humanity of goodness where it ought to be in his temptation of Adam and Eve...why would he come back to undo all that to bring them back to Goodness, and knowledge of their Creator, God from whom all goodness flows? Isn't it better to leave them in their deception? In sins they lack the Power of God, that Michael the Archangel, for example, has...and he's free to rule them.

[Beto]

So if Satan did his works successfully at (evil) depriving humanity of goodness where it ought to be in his temptation of Adam and Eve...why would he come back to undo all that to bring them back to Goodness, and knowledge of their Creator, God from whom all goodness flows? Isn't it better to leave them in their deception? In sins they lack the Power of God, that Michael the Archangel, for example, has...and he's free to rule them.

You talk about Adam and Eve and Michael the Archangel, as if you didn't know them from the Bible, which could've been written through "Satan's" inspiration. This reasoning you are making could just as well be part of "Satan's" plan to drive Man away from the true path to "God", and you have no way to demonstrate it isn't, just like you have no way to demonstrate it really is "God's" plan.

[MagusYanam]

Part of the whole Christian mentality is Christians DO have the 'Grace of God', and they are denying that others do not. It is the whole very annoying 'Christians aren't perfect, just forgiven' attitude that implies that other people are do not not have 'grace' nor are they forgiven.

OK, goat. Not sure what phrase annoyed you...or what implication you understood of that phrase...

Let's further clarify my use of the word "graces" vs. Grace is in a big capital name, Grace. Sorry about using capitals without attaching definition, it's my forgetting to take note of readers who do not understand words in the paradigm I do.

graces, as in gifts of sanctity, are given to anyone of us in the human family as God pleases. Nobody knows where the Spirit goes or where He blows...so that none may boast, such as the boast that only believers have it. But gifts of sanctity prepares us to receive what is greater then the graces themselfves...it's to receive the Holy Spirit, God Himself. Since God has nothing to do with sin, those who remain in original sin or those who are never been baptized by the Spirit may not ever receive God Himself. "What darkness has to do with light, fire with ice?" The temples of their soul lack the sanctification to receive God.

Any unbeliever certainly may possess great graces from God, so he is capable of great human love and be at the highest level of morality that the moral being can be, for example Buddha. God does allow such gifts to unbelievers so that us believers can have humility. However human love goes only so far as this lifetime. When death comes, there is separation, pain, and loss....and the greater the love, the greater the vulnerability to pain of loss.

Yet, in this world every couple-inove dream of True Love, the concept of "Forever Love", 'Love Always," "Eternal Love" inspires much poetry, music and aesthetic delight. A Love that nothing can separate.

To reach to that level of Divine Love...we have to have the Holy Spirit Himself, only possible if every stain of sin is washed from our souls and we attain sanctifying grace.

I don't think this distinction can be made. All grace is the work of the Holy Spirit and signifies the presence of God, regardless of whether it is a believer or a non-believer who receives it. To try to qualify grace, or to qualify the meaning of grace by whether it happens to a believer or to a non-believer, would define grace out of meaningful existence. Likewise, to try to qualify the existence, the presence or the work of the Holy Spirit is futile. God is free. Nothing we human beings can do limits God's freedom to effect salvation - all we are capable of doing is limiting ourselves (which we do enough of already).

Also, grace is not attained by human effort - anything we can do to try to attain grace is superfluous, since we already have it in abundance.

It may look like I'm building a case for universal salvation here, and maybe that's a good thing. But I can only give Barth's answer: I don't know whether or not everyone will be saved - that's not given to me to know - but I do know that God came as Christ came not to condemn, but to save the world, and it's better and healthier to live in hope that he will succeed than in dour, confining doubt that he won't.

[MagusYanam]

"Sacrifice himself on the cross" has no meaning to a supernatural being whose "death" is temporary. It would mean no more that a super being "Satan" did a sham death than for a super being "Jesus" to have done so -- if any such thing happened at all.

No one knows for certain that "sacrifice himself on the cross" by a super being happened in reality. Some believe stories in ancient writings by people promoting a new religion. Nothing outside their writings verifies the stories. Humans are known to be deceived or deceitful in promotion of ideas they favor – including religion.

Of course, a powerful and deceptive "Satan" could cause the "bible" to be written as though such a thing had happened, whether it had or not. No one would know if the story was real -- just as is true now. Some THINK they know, but that is "faith" rather than knowledge.

Nothing that has been said so far in this thread is anything that a clever "Satan" could not have managed. Therefore, no one knows if they are actually worshiping a "god" or a "devil".

And as I said before - it is true that evil is plausible, but it is also true that evil is cynical, and preys upon a person's ignorance. Jesus himself never preyed on anyone's ignorance - that is, he never assured his followers that they were righteous and needn't worry about examining themselves. Instead, we find him always challenging, always turning things upside down, always telling parables that kept his followers examining themselves. He never tempted his followers with greatness, but rather encouraged them to serve in the most humble way.

Socrates may have had a daemon, but that did not make him evil. Jesus was, in a number of ways, his disciples' daemon in the Socratic sense - never allowing them to slip into complacency and self-righteousness, but always keeping them thinking and keeping their egos in check.

Of course, I think you'll find that in history there are episodes where we Christians have gotten far too complacent and far too assured of our own rightness, and the world has suffered for it. But the work of temptation wasn't done first by Christ, but by those who failed to continue to raise doubt in the Socratic style.

[Blaze]

He never tempted his followers with greatness

I wouldn't say "never"

Matthew 19:28 And Jesus said unto them, Verily I say unto you, That ye which have followed me, in the regeneration when the Son of man shall sit in the throne of his glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.
19:29 And every one that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my name's sake, shall receive an hundredfold, and shall inherit everlasting life.