Doesn't Satan work for God?

Question

Doesn't Satan just manage hell for God? You know like a hotel manager.

Answer 1

In ancient Jewish tradition Satan is simply an angel doing the work that God assigned to Satan to do.

The word Satan means challenger. With the idea of Satan challenging us, or tempting if you will. This description sees Satan as the angel who is the embodiment of man's challenges. This idea of Satan works closely with God as an integral part of Gods plan for us. His job is to make choosing good over evil enough of a challenge so that it becomes clear to us that there can be only one meaningful or logical choice.

Contrast this to Christianity, which sees Satan as God's opponent. In Jewish thought, the idea that there exists anything capable of setting itself up as God's opponent would be considered polytheistic or setting up the devil to be an equally powerful polarity to god or a demigod.

Oddly, proof for The Christian satan/devil mythology is supposedly found in the ancient Jewish texts that were borrowed to create the bible. One can’t help but wonder how Christians came up with such a fantastically different interpretation of Gods assistant Satan in their theology.

Other hints about Satan’s role in human relations can be seen if you look at the name Lucifer. It’s meaning in the original tongue translates as Light bearer or light bringer. Essentially the bringer of enlightenment. The temptations of the Satan idea bring all of us eventually into Gods light. Hardly the Evil entity of Christian mythology.

Love and blessings
don

Answer 2

In a sense Satan does work for God in that God allows him to do things that God would not do like tempt people to sin for purposes that God only knows for sure. The Bible talks about how God will test people to prove their faith and to make them stronger. So just like God allowed Satan to test Job, He still allows Satan to test his saints and to drive sinners to Him seeking salvation.

As to Satan managing Hell, that's just a story with no basis in the Bible. Hell is the holding tank of the damned and some of the demons. Satan isn't there. He's roaming the world looking for someone to devour.

Job 1:8 And the LORD said to Satan, "Have you considered my servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, who fears God and turns away from evil?"

9 Then Satan answered the LORD and said, "Does Job fear God for no reason? 10 Have you not put a hedge around him and his house and all that he has, on every side? You have blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land. 11 But stretch out your hand and touch all that he has, and he will curse you to your face."

12 And the LORD said to Satan, "Behold, all that he has is in your hand. Only against him do not stretch out your hand." So Satan went out from the presence of the LORD.

1 Peter 5:8 Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.

Revelation 20:10 and the devil who had deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and sulfur where the beast and the false prophet were, and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever.

Answer 3

Good question; and great metaphor! However, he thinks he's working for himself only, as well as being a competitor with God for control over everything and everybody. But he's tragically wrong on all counts.

So, actually "yes", to your question, despite these evil intentions by Satan, because our wise God now actually uses him in order to accomplish any objective to reach His ultimate goals, somewhat like what the innoculation process does when receiving an injection of a dead strain of the very virus that would otherwise kill you! But, you see, if it wasn't for Satan's malicious and successful attempt to have Christ killed, we would not have had His sacrificial and substitutionary death provided for us as our way to escape these very fires of Hell that you mentioned!

So, in other words, he does "work" for God, but not in an compliant sense. And, even if he could be God's hotel manager, he'd make a "hell"uva lousy one at that, knowing that he was directly responsible for losing all those millions and millions of reservations that would have otherwise been kept at the Hotel Lake of Fire!

Answer 4

Absolutely not! Satan works for nobody but himself! His aim right from the start has bneen to get the worship that would rightly belong to the true God, for himself, and obviously in this regard he has had some success for the Bible calls him the god of this world(2Corinthians4:4) No Satan is in opposition to God, not in agreement with God in any way!

Answer 5

When judgment has been passed, Satan will burn in Hellfire just like his demons and all the sinners of the world.

Also, Christians don't view Satan as God's opponent in a way that makes him equal to God. When Satan was Lucifer he was God's highest angel. Unfortunately that angel decided that he was equal to God. So God tossed him out of heaven, stripped him of his name and he has been condemned ever since.

Answer 6

I think what you're onto here is two problems in theology:
1) the problem of evil---if everything in the universe is the creation of an omnipotent omniscient benevolent deity--then how can evil in any form exist--isn't everything within God's plan (including the existence of Satan and hell)---the typical Christian viewpoint is that evil comes into existence by man freely choosing to rebel
2) the problem of free will---in a universe in which an omniscient deity knows everything that is going to happen--is anybody really free? (including Satan, after all Satan's rebellion is known beforehand by God and is within God's plan and he is essentially God's hotel manager as you said)

Christian theologians have tried to come up with various answers to these problems. I've never really found them persuasive. To me that is just further evidence that there is no such a thing as omniscient, omnipotent. benevolent deity.

Answer 7

I was going to point out how different Abrahamic religions view Satan differently, but Don beat me to it.

We do see that in Judaism, Satan acts much more of a "henchman" who has to carry out the dirty work for God. Christianity's sharp "good guy vs. bad guy" dualism was largely adopted from Zoroastrianism. The whole notion of Satan being a fallen angel largely comes from "Dante's Inferno" and Milton's "Paradise Lost".

The name "Lucifer" shows up in the Bible once and only once, and only because St. Jerome used that word for the Hebrew "heyel" (morning star) when he first translated the scriptures from Hebrew to Latin. The "L" was capitalized in the King James version. The original Isiah passage just compares a king's fall from his reign to the decent of Venus (the morning star) in the night sky.

Answer 8

before the creation of man, satan had been an angel of God. however, His pride and desire to be greater than God, got him thrown out of heaven. after this, knowing he will be burning in hell forever,satan tries to get as many people as possible to burn with him.

Answer 9

no Satan turned away from God and made his domain in hell

God let him be, because he wants lost souls to go to him

but one day God will not put up with him anymore!

Answer 10

I'm sure their relationship is far more complex than we can comprehend.