What Satan Can Do
While the ability of satan to influence the actions of people is no surprise, two of the plagues brought upon Job are notable to me: one is the mighty wind that came and blew down the houses; the other, even more interesting, is what the servant thought was "fire from God". One could hardly blame him for thinking that, and even Job assumed it was God who was taking everything from him (although, remarkably, he didn't attribute wrongdoing to God in any if this). However, the heavenly background story makes it pretty clear that God did not MAKE any of those things happen, He merely PERMITTED them to happen, a very significant difference, both from a standpoint of understanding the character of God and understanding the nature of the abilities of satan. This passage seems to make it clear that (as also has often been inferred from the passage where Jusus calms the storm, Luke 8:23) satan can control, at least at times or to some degree, forces of nature (which I personally for a long time had doubted). Particularly notable is the fact that satan can make fire fall from heaven (also noted in Rev.13:13, although I have assumed that that passage refers to something technological), as obviously God has done numerous times in the OT (e.g., with Elijah), as well as in Revelation (20:9).
Created 4 months ago
