On Satan's Power

Satan has no power on earth.

That's right. Quit glorifying Satan! Right now, Satan has the worst room in hell - he's down there languishing in anguish, not sitting proud on a high red throne like a hornèd lord, grinning wickedly wide as he powerfully pushes his seeping evil upwards to infect our souls.

Nah. We've already got our own more-than-sufficient minds to do that. We can see all the possibilities for ourselves, can't we? Same as Lucifer could see the possibilities for himself. Before he fell.

When needless to say, there was no Satan to tempt him.

Just as with Lucifer, each of us is more than capable of performing that service for ourselves: to see a possibility for our selves. To find it seductive. To dwell upon it. To be fascinated. To dive in. But oh, it is so much more comforting to blame someone else though, isn't it?

Temptation is no more than observation plus imagination. Anyone who can see and think needs no help from mister burly red hornyman to see the bad possibilities that lie entangled with the good. And you know what, sometimes those bad possibilities hold some powerful and obvious attractions! But that's not because Satan personally applied a shiny wet coat of Good-Lookin' Evil Gloss to it, right before you looked! No, it looks good because almost every seductive bad thing is just a seductive good thing misused. And the virtue is still right there, hot and plain to see! But you want it for the wrong reasons, or you want it when it's not yours, or you want to get it in such a way that you endanger or destroy it, you want what you want with contempt for what you want. That's not Satan, making that happen for you.

There's only one influence Satan has on this earth: at one point in time (or perhaps, a point just before time) he set one hell of a bad example. That's it. That's the entire extent of his power and influence: he set a bad example. His hands are not reaching up from hell right now, working on your heart, massaging the pesky kinks out of your conscience. If you feel hands doing that, take a good look at the fingerprints: those hands are yours, my friend.

The only hands Satan has on this earth are ours.