Five and Counting - The Devil is in the detail

Mount Zaphon, also know as
Jebel Aqra, and Mount Kılıç
(Syrian-Turkish Border)

    

How you have fallen form heaven,

morning star, son of the dawn!

You have been cast down to the earth,

    you who once laid low the nations!

13 

You said in your heart,

    “I will ascend to the heavens;

I will raise my throne

    above the stars of God;

I will sit enthroned on the mount of assembly,

    on the utmost heights of Mount Zaphon.[b]

14 

I will ascend above the tops of the clouds;

    I will make myself like the Most High.”

15 

But you are brought down to the realm of the dead,

    to the depths of the pit.

Isaiah 14

What went wrong?  From the outset there was a tempter: a force of opposition to thwart and distort goodness. The presence is like faeces.   Normally we are careful with this and dispose of it down the loo.  But sometimes we trip up, and it is smeared across our face.  It is the stench that pervades war.

The spirit of evil is a subtle presence, present across the whole world and across all time. In some cultures the presence also made a 'god'.  In others the conflict is a struggle between good and evil.  For me the paradox is that the potential for the most vial acts imaginable are released into this world by the Creator of all.  How can that be?  It is our understanding that this will only happen once.  Next time this canker will be destroyed.  There will be no 'slipping up'.  I believe this is not because we won't be able to.  It will be because we won't want to.

We see evil motivations of violence drilled into all creation.  From the destructive force of the virus, which decimates bird populations, to the subjugation and enslavement of whole societies.

The force exists, but we have been given the presence of the Creator to help protect us and resist this force.  Just as it is possible for human to save the planet from self destruction, so with the presence of the Creator all of the tempters wiles can be overcome.  

So the demons of hell have been unleashed, but also with it, the protector, the presence of the Creator, who comes in the form of Jesus.