satan stuff and general things that you do not want to read

[superblue]

So.....  Christ defeated death and satan through the cross and His resurrection.......     Why then does satan still have a grip on humanity other than free will.  It would seem that once defeated that is the end.. how then is satan able to still tempt humanity to go against God, or is there a different understanding of what it means to defeat sin and satan ?

 

also could humanity / society still exist as it is today in the physical, and have free will ( or choices ) if satan either did not exist and or no longer had the power to tempt humanity.... would people still be wanting to go against God in all the same ways it is doing now ?

Yes satans' greatest trick is to get people to think he doesn't exist / thank you very much  for pointing that out, and no we wouldn't all be in heaven if satan didn't exist that isn't what i am hypothesising.

but back to the Resurrection.....   are there any books that state what happened to pharasees , scribes, the Jewish hirearchy that condemed Christ to death / After the Resurrection .... there is a short scripture passage i forget where that states that after the angel talked to the women at the entrance of the tomb, that the soliders went back and reported what happened and in turn were paid off to lie and say that the apostles/disciples removed the body ( paraphrasing and do not remember where in the bible new testament that is stated ) .  so we get a tiny bit of insight.....   Also  why after the resurrection would the resurrection be so secretive ? Still there was this slow revealing to the apostles, everything has been fulfilled why not at that point show back up to everyone  including the jewish hirearchy to be like, hey i warned you.

Though if they were fearful of the truth from their own soliders, to the point to where they still didn't either get it, or didn't care and merely only wanted to protect their power, then I suppose returning after the Resurrection in full Glory wouldn't make a hill of beans to those who put him to death would it. ?

[Luigi]

This is complicated stuff, and I don't have the answers, but to me it seems to involve:

1. Faith. For reasons I do not understand, God seems to want His children to have a faith-based relationship with Him. That could be the result of original sin, I suppose - prior to the original sin, God walked in the garden in the cool of the day with Adam & Eve - pretty clear evidence that He does, in fact exist. Since the original sin, God has appeared to certain people, but not to all people - most of us have to exercise our faith in God because we don't get to walk with him in garden in the cool of the day. So I kind of conclude that eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (THREE prepositional phrases with "of" in a row!) must have deprived humanity of direct knowledge of God, thus requiring us to have faith in God. 

In a similar way (to use the current phrase), when Jesus himself walked the earth, some people believed in him and some didn't, even among those who saw the same miracles, heard the same teaching, and so forth. After the resurrection, Jesus appeared only to people who believed in him (but not all people who believed in him?). I suppose Jesus could have appeared to all the people of Jerusalem - in the temple, on top of the temple, walked right into Pontius Pilate's court and given a full report, proved He was alive again, showed his wounds to Pontius Pilate the same way he did to Thomas - anything He wanted to. But that would have - or might have? - removed the faith requirement for all subsequent generations, which would have returned the earth to the paradise it originally was (maybe?).  AND

2. Free will, which you mention above, but only briefly. For reasons I do not understand, God seems to want us to want to love & obey HIm. He seems to want us to freely choose to love, follow, obey, etc. Without free will (and intellect, among other things), we would be like animals - being what God created us to be and doing what God created us to do, and sinless because of that, but mindlessly - or instinctively. Which is fine if you're an animal, but God created us with an intellect - a mind - so I guess he wants us to exercise that faculty - that mind - in our relationship with Him, rather than just following him mindlessly. 

 

But there are days when I feel like it would be so much easier if we were more like animals and simply were what we're supposed to be and did what we're supposed to do, mindlessly, without having to make recurring good choices and all that.  

[superblue]

 ty for the reply L / well then there is this that we were discussing in an old testament class , this week i think,  and it kind of ties in i guess with this thread now, is that we some how got to talking about the book of Job, well turns out that the term " satan " was more than likely in hebrew Hasatan ipsofacto drop the Ha an we got satan, anyhow.

 

book of Job, mentions the "  heavenly court " / now mind you it depends which version of the Catholic bible you read because things get worded a bit different but not by much ///// or at least going back to historical accuracy in the Jewish tradition the story goes something about being this discussion in the heavenly court, to test Job/ Hasatan was * an now i am paraphrasing my instructor " the prosecutor in a court " *  an the challenge was put forth, an most everyone knows that story.....

Point is, and i didn't have the time or energy to deal with my instructor.... if that is the case, is this " Hasatan "  the same angel that fell from heaven taking some angels with him ? or no ?  So then i got super confused and just had to look up online now, okay so evidently Jews do not believe in " the devil and hell " but do believe in a satan//// go figure that one out, can anyone explain that part as being correct or not and why ?

we briefly discussed monotheism 

and the pagan gods, and for some odd reason, my instructor replied to a student that Hades is not a pagan god but a place, and im almost certain he is wrong, okay, fact check, thank you bing.com, Hades was a greek god, of the underworld, which we think of as hell.  so side note do i bring that up to my instructor tomorrow an let that student know he was right ? we shall see...

okay ty.