But what about Satan’s claim that the authority of those kingdoms had been “handed over” to him?

Again, there is the very real possibility that Satan was lying. But let’s give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he was telling the truth.

Notice Satan did not say that Adam had handed it over to him. As we have already seen, Adam couldn’t have handed it over to Satan because Adam never had it to give. Adam ruled fish, birds, and cattle, not kingdoms. (There were, in fact, no kingdoms of people to rule when Adam fell.) Additionally, if Satan was offering Jesus rule over the kingdom of darkness, which consisted of all evil spirits and unsaved people, then there is absolutely no way that Adam could have handed that jurisdiction over to Satan. Satan was ruling over fallen angels before Adam was created.

Satan may have meant that all the people of the world had handed him authority over them, as they were not submitted to God and thus were, knowingly or unknowingly, submitted to him.

An even better possibility is that God handed it over to him. It is very possible, in the light of Scripture, that God said to Satan, “You and your evil spirits have My permission to rule over everyone who is not submitted to Me.” That may seem hard for you to swallow now, but you will later see that is probably the best explanation of Satan’s claim. If God truly is “ruler over the realm of mankind” (Dan. 4:25), then any authority Satan has over mankind must have been granted by God.

Satan is only ruling the kingdom of darkness, which could also be called the “kingdom of rebellion.” He was ruling over that kingdom since the day he was expelled from heaven, which was prior to Adam’s fall. Up until Adam’s fall, the kingdom of darkness consisted only of angelic rebels. But when Adam sinned, he joined the kingdom of rebellion, and Satan’s kingdom ever since then has included not just rebellious angels, but rebellious humans.

Satan had rule over his dark domain before Adam was even created, and so let us not think that when Adam fell, Satan gained something that Adam previously possessed. No, when Adam sinned, he joined a kingdom of rebellion that had existed for some time, a kingdom ruled by Satan.

If it is true that God and Satan are not, have never been, and never will be in a battle, then why do we read in the book of Revelation of a future war in heaven that involves Satan (see Rev. 12:7-9)? That’s a good question, and one that can be answered easily.

Notice that this war will be between Michael and his angels and Satan and his angels. God Himself is not mentioned as being involved in the battle. If He were, the conflict could hardly be described as a war, because God, being all-powerful, could easily squelch any opposition in a moment of time as He has already proven.

Angels, including Michael, are not all-powerful, and thus their conflict with Satan and his angels can be described as a war because there will be some actual conflict for a portion of time. Still, being more powerful, they will overcome Satan and his hordes.

Why would God not become personally involved in this particular battle, leaving it to His angels? I have no idea. Certainly God, being all-knowing, knew that His angels could win the war, and so perhaps He figured there was no need for Him to be involved personally.

I have no doubt that God could have easily and quickly annihilated the wicked Canaanites in the days of Joshua, but He chose to give the task to the Israelites. What God could have done effortlessly in seconds, He required them to do, expending great efforts over a period of months. Perhaps this was more pleasing to God as it required faith on the part of the Israelites. Perhaps that is the reason He will not personally be involved in that future war in heaven. The Bible, however, does not tell us.

Just because there is going to be a war someday in heaven between Michael and his angels and Satan and his angels, that is no reason for us to think that God is not all-powerful—any more than Israel’s battles in Canaan are reason for us to think that God is not all-powerful.

But might not people become angry at God because of their suffering? Perhaps they will, but we gently need to help them see their pride. None have a right to complain at God for His treatment of them, because we all deserve to have been cast into hell a long time ago. Rather than cursing God for their calamity, people should be praising Him for loving them so much to warn them. God has every right to ignore everyone, leaving them to follow their selfish paths to hell. But God loves people and is calling out to them every day. He quietly calls them through the flowering of apple trees, the songs of birds, the majesty of mountains, and the twinkling of a myriad of stars. He calls to them through their consciences, through His body the church, and through His Holy Spirit. But they ignore His call.

Certainly it is not God’s will for people to have to suffer, but when they keep ignoring Him, He loves them enough to use more drastic measures to get their attention. Hurricanes, earthquakes, floods and famines are some of those more drastic measures. God hopes that such calamities will humble people’s pride and bring them to their senses.

Finally, in regard to this first myth of God and Satan’s reputed battles, I would like to conclude by considering the commonly-used statement: Jesus defeated Satan on the cross. Scripture never actually states that Jesus defeated Satan on the cross.

When we say that Jesus defeated Satan, we make it sound as if Jesus and Satan were in a battle, which implies that God is not all-powerful and that Satan was not already under the complete authority of God. There are more biblical ways of describing what happened to Satan when Jesus gave His life on Calvary. For example, Scripture tells us that through His death, Jesus rendered “powerless him who had the power of death” (see Heb. 2:14-15).

To what extent did Jesus render Satan powerless? Obviously, Satan is not completely powerless now, or else the apostle John would never have written, “The whole world lies in the power of the evil one” (1 John 5:19, emphasis added). According to Hebrews 2:14-15, Satan was rendered powerless in regard to “the power of death.” What does that mean?

Scripture makes reference to three kinds of death: spiritual death, physical death, and the second death.

As we learned in an earlier chapter, the second death (or eternal death) is referred to in Revelation 2:22; 20:6,14; 21:8, and it is the time when unbelievers will be thrown into the lake of fire.

Physical death occurs when a person’s spirit departs from his body, which then ceases to function.

Spiritual death describes the condition of a human spirit that has not been born again by the Holy Spirit. A spiritually dead person has a spirit that is alienated from God, a spirit that possesses a sinful nature, a spirit that is, to some degree, joined to Satan. Ephesians 2:1-3 paints for us a picture of the spiritually dead person:

And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.

Paul wrote that the Ephesian Christians were dead in their trespasses and sins. Obviously he was not referring to physical death because he was writing to physically alive people. Therefore, he must have been saying that they were dead, spiritually speaking.

What killed them, spiritually? It was their “trespasses and sins.” Remember God told Adam that in the day he disobeyed, he would die (see Gen. 2:17). God was not speaking of physical death, but spiritual death, because Adam did not die physically on the day he ate the forbidden fruit. Rather, he died spiritually that day, and did not die physically until hundreds of years later.

Paul continued by saying that the Ephesians, as spiritually dead people, had walked in (or practiced) those trespasses and sins, following the “course of the world” (that is, doing what everyone else was doing) and following “the prince of the power of the air.”

Who is “the prince of the power of the air”? He is Satan, who rules his dark domain as commander-in-chief over other evil spirits who inhabit the atmosphere. Those evil spirits are listed by various ranks in a later chapter of Ephesians (see Eph. 6:12).

Paul said that dark prince is a “spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience.” The expression, “sons of disobedience,” is just another description for all unbelievers, emphasizing that their nature is sinful. Paul later said that they “were by nature children of wrath” (Eph. 2:3, emphasis added). Additionally, he said that Satan was working in them.

When a hurricane or earthquake strikes, it raises a theological question in the minds of people who believe in God: “Who is causing this?” There are only two possibilities for Bible-believing Christians: Either God or Satan causes them.

Some may object: “Oh no! God is not to blame! People are to blame. God is judging them for their sins.”

If God is causing hurricanes and earthquakes because of His judgment upon sin, then certainly we can lay the blame on rebel humans rather than on God, but still, God bears responsibility, as the natural disasters would not occur without His decree.

Or, if it is true that God allows Satan to send hurricanes and earthquakes to bring His judgment upon sinners, then we could say that Satan causes them, but still, God bears responsibility. The reason is because He is the one who permitted Satan to cause the destruction and because those disasters occur as a result of His reaction to sin.

Some say that neither God nor Satan are responsible for hurricanes and earthquakes, but that they are simply a “natural phenomena in our fallen world of sin.” In a vague way, they are also attempting to lay the blame on humankind for natural disasters, but still missing the point. This explanation does not take God out of the picture. If hurricanes are simply a “natural phenomena in our fallen world of sin,” who decided that they would be? Obviously hurricanes are not man-made. That is, hurricanes don’t develop whenever a certain volume of lies are spoken into the atmosphere. Earthquakes don’t occur when a certain number of people commit adultery.

No, if there is a relationship between hurricanes and sin, then God is involved, because hurricanes are a manifestation of His judgment upon sin. Even if they occur randomly, it would have to be God who decreed that they would occur randomly, and thus He is involved.

Even if there is no relationship between sin and natural disasters, and God goofed when He designed the world, so that there are faults in the earth’s crust that sometimes shift and weather systems that occasionally go berserk, still God would bear responsibility for earthquakes and hurricanes as He is the Creator, and His mistakes harm people.

Another flaw in the “Satan’s-Gain theory” is that it makes God look rather stupid, as if He was caught off-guard by the events of the fall and as a result found Himself in a sad predicament. Did God not know that Satan would tempt Adam and Eve and that the fall of man would result? If God is all-knowing, and He is, then He must have known what was going to happen. That is why the Bible informs us that He made plans to redeem humanity even before He created humanity (see Matt. 25:34; Acts 2:2-23; 4:27-28; 1 Cor. 2:7-8; Eph. 3:8-11; 2 Tim. 1:8-10; Rev. 13:8).

God created the devil knowing he would fall, and He created Adam and Eve knowing they would fall. There is absolutely no way that Satan could have tricked God and gained something that God would rather Satan not have.

Am I saying that God wants Satan to be “the god of this world?” Yes, for as long as it suits His divine purposes. If God didn’t want Satan to operate, He would simply stop him, as we are told in Revelation 20:1-2 He will one day do.

I am not saying, however, that God wants anyone to remain under Satan’s rule. God wants everyone to be saved and escape the domain of Satan (Acts 26:18; Col. 1:13; 1 Tim. 2:3-4; 2 Pet. 3:9). Yet God permits Satan to rule over everyone who loves darkness (see John. 3:19)—those who continue in their rebellion against Him.

But isn’t there anything we can do to help people escape Satan’s dark kingdom? Yes, we can pray for them and call them to repent and believe the gospel (as Jesus has commanded us). If they do, they’ll be delivered from Satan’s authority. But to think that we can “pull down” the wicked spirits that hold people in their grasp is erroneous. If people want to stay in darkness, God will let them. Jesus told His disciples that if people in certain cities did not receive their message, they should shake the dust off their feet and go to another city (Matt 10:14). He did not tell them to stay and pull down the strongholds over the city so that the people would become more receptive. God allows wicked spirits to hold in bondage those who refuse to repent and turn to Him.

So we have only two possible answers for the question of natural disasters. Either God or Satan is responsible. Before we look at specific scriptures to determine which answer is correct, let’s think further about those two possible answers.

If Satan is the one who causes natural disasters, then either God can or cannot stop him. If God can stop Satan from causing natural disasters but doesn’t, then He again bears some responsibility. The disaster never would have occurred without His permission.

And now on the other side. Let’s assume, for a moment, that God can’t stop Satan, but He would like to stop him. Is that really a possibility?

If God can’t stop Satan from causing a natural disaster, then either Satan is more powerful than God, or Satan is smarter than God. This is, in effect, what adherents to the “Satan gained control over the world at Adam’s fall” theory are saying. They claim that Satan has a legal right to do whatever he pleases on the earth because he stole Adam’s lease. Now, supposedly, God would like to stop Satan but can’t because He must honor Adam’s lease that Satan now possesses. In other words, God was too stupid to foresee what would happen at the fall, but Satan, being more intelligent than God, has now gained power that God wishes he didn’t have. Personally, I’m not about to say that Satan is wiser than God.

If the “Satan-Gained” theory were true, we would want to know why Satan doesn’t cause more earthquakes and hurricanes than he presently does, and why he doesn’t target large populations of Christians. (If you say “because God won’t let him target populations of Christians,” then you’ve just admitted that Satan cannot operate without God’s permission.)

When we narrow it down specifically, the only two possible answers to our question are these: Either (1) God causes earthquakes and hurricanes or (2) Satan does with God’s permission.

Can you see that regardless of which answer is correct, God is the one who is ultimately responsible? When people say, “God didn’t send that hurricane—Satan did with God’s permission,” they are not totally letting God “off the hook” as they might hope. If God could have stopped Satan from causing the hurricane, regardless of whether He wanted to or not, then He bears responsibility. Human rebels may be the ones to blame because of their sin (if the hurricane was sent by God or permitted by God as judgment), but still, it is foolish to say that God is in no way involved or responsible.

We can thank God, however, that He had mercy on humanity, and because of His mercy, no one has to remain in his or her pitiful condition. Because Jesus’ substitutionary death satisfied the claims of divine justice, all those who believe in Christ can escape from spiritual death and Satan’s captivity because they are no longer under God’s wrath. When we believe in the Lord Jesus, the Holy Spirit comes into our spirits and eradicates Satan’s nature from it, causing our spirits to be born again (see John 3:1-16) and allowing us to become partakers of God’s divine nature (see 2 Pet. 1:4).

Now back to our original question. When the writer of Hebrews stated that Jesus, through His death, rendered “powerless him who had the power of death, that is, the devil,” he meant that the power of spiritual death, which Satan holds over every unsaved person, has been broken for all those who are “in Christ.” We are made spiritually alive because of Christ who has paid the penalty for our sins.

Moreover, because we are no longer spiritually dead and under Satan’s dominion, we no longer have to fear physical death, since we know what awaits us—a glorious eternal inheritance.

Finally, because of Jesus, we have been delivered from suffering the second death, being cast into the lake of fire.

Did Jesus defeat the devil on the cross? No, He did not, because there was no battle between Jesus and Satan. Jesus did, however, render Satan powerless in regard to Satan’s power over spiritual death, by which he holds unsaved people captive in sin. Satan still holds the power of spiritual death over unsaved people, but as far as those who are in Christ are concerned, Satan is powerless over them.

As strange as it may seem to some of our ears, we need to understand that God and Satan are not, have never been, and never will be in a battle. Yes, they do have differing agendas, and it could be said that they are in opposition. But when two parties are in opposition to one another, and one is immensely more powerful than the other, their conflicts are not considered battles. Could an earthworm fight with an elephant? Satan, like an earthworm, made a feeble attempt to oppose One who was immensely more powerful. His opposition was quickly dealt with, and he was expelled from heaven “like lightning.” There was no battle—there was only an expulsion.

If God is all-powerful, then Satan doesn’t have a ghost of a chance at even slightly hindering God from doing what He wants to do. And if God does permit Satan to do anything, ultimately it is only to accomplish His own divine will. This truth will become abundantly clear as we continue to examine the scriptures on this subject.

Interestingly, God’s supreme authority over Satan was not only demonstrated in eternity past, but will also be demonstrated in the future. We read in Revelation that one solitary angel will bind Satan and incarcerate him for a thousand years (see Rev. 20:1-3). That future incident could not be considered a battle between God and Satan any more than Satan’s original expulsion from heaven could be considered a battle. Note also that Satan will not have the power to break out of his prison and will only be released when it suits God’s purposes (see Rev. 20:7-9).

This also helps us understand Paul’s statement about the “disarming of rulers and authorities” found in Colossians 2:13-15:

And when you were [spiritually] dead in your transgressions…He made you alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our transgressions, having canceled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us and which was hostile to us; and He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross. When He had disarmed the rulers and authorities, He made a public display of them, having triumphed over them through Him (emphasis added).

Paul uses obvious metaphorical language in this passage. In the first part, he compares our guilt to a “certificate of debt.” What we could not pay was paid for us by Christ, who took our sin-debt to the cross.

In the second part, just as ancient kings stripped their defeated foes of their weapons and triumphantly paraded them through their city streets, so Christ’s death was a triumph over “rulers and authorities,” that is, the lower ranks of demons who rule over rebellious humans, holding them captive.

Could we not say, based upon this passage, that Christ defeated Satan? Perhaps, but with some qualification. We must keep in mind that in this passage, Paul was writing metaphorically. And every metaphor has a point where the similarities turn to dissimilarities, as we learned in the chapter about biblical interpretation.

In interpreting Paul’s metaphors in Colossians 2:13-15, we must be cautious. Obviously, there wasn’t an actual “certificate of debt” that had all our sins written on it that was nailed to the cross. That is, however, symbolic of what Jesus accomplished.

Similarly, the demons who ruled over unsaved humanity were not literally disarmed of their swords and shields and paraded publicly through the streets by Jesus. The language Paul uses is symbolic of what Jesus accomplished for us. We were held captive by those evil spirits. By dying for our sins, however, Jesus released us from our captivity. Jesus didn’t literally fight against those evil spirits and they were not at war with Him. They, by God’s righteous permission, held us in their power all of our lives. Their “armaments,” as it were, were pointed, not at Christ, but at us. Jesus, however, “disarmed” them. They can’t keep us captive any longer.

Let us not think that there was some age-long fight between Jesus and Satan’s evil spirits, and finally, Jesus won the battle on the cross. If we are going to say that Jesus defeated the devil, let us be certain we understand that He defeated the devil for us, and not for Himself.

I once chased away a small dog in my yard who was terrifying my baby daughter. I might say I defeated that little dog, but I hope you understand that dog was never any threat to me, only to my daughter. It was the same with Jesus and Satan. Jesus chased a dog away from us that never bothered Him at all.

How did He chase away that Satan-dog? He did it by bearing the punishment for our sins, thus releasing us from our guilt before God, thus delivering us from God’s wrath, and thus the evil spirits whom God righteously permits to enslave human rebels no longer had any right to enslave us. Praise God for that!

This leads us to an appropriate place to examine a second related myth.