Watchman's Teaching Letter #4 August 1998
This is the fourth in a series of monthly teaching letters. If you have not received any of my previous letters (#1, #2, and #3) please send $2.00 for each back issue you would like to have. If you really have a desire to learn the Scripture’s deepest hidden truths, you will not want to miss any of these back issues. I also want to take the time to thank all of the people who are helping to support this ministry!
Now Continuing The Topic:
JUST WHO IS THIS PATRIARCH, JUDAH? (Part 4)
In the first three issues, we learned much about Judah’s personal life. Judah had a very complex entangled and complicated life. There are few who have ever really mastered the subject of Judah and some of the statements by different commentators about his life and tribe (especially his relation with Tamar) are spurious and totally out of order. With this issue, we are going to turn from Judah’s personal life and direct our attention to his descendants, the Tribe of Judah. If you thought Judah’s personal life was complicated in the previous studies, you haven’t seen anything yet! From Judah we get the highest and most wonderful of blessings, and at the same time, a terrible and vexing curse.
JUDAH BECOMES BOTH A BLESSING AND A CURSE
Like the old saying, we have good news and we have bad news. Let’s take up the good news first. To do this we will have to go to the 49th chapter of Genesis where Jacob, just before he dies, prophesies the destinies of each of the tribes of his family. For Judah, Jacob prophesied this, Genesis 49:8-12:
“8 Judah, thou art he whom thy brethren shall praise: thy hand shall be in the neck of thine enemies; thy father’s children shall bow down before thee. 9 Judah is a lion’s whelp: from the prey, my son, thou art gone up: he stooped down, he couched as a lion, and as an old lion; who shall rouse him up? 10 The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh come; and unto him shall the gathering of the people be. 11 Binding his foal unto the vine, and his ass’s colt unto the choice vine; he washed his garments in wine, and his clothes in the blood of grapes. His eyes shall be red with wine, and his teeth white with milk.”
There is enough in this passage to fill several books, but for now I want you to notice the prophecy of both the first and second comings of Yahshua the Messiah. In His first coming our Redemption is accomplished — In His second coming, we will be redeemed from our enemy along with many other things. What I wanted to do here is to point out how, in Judah, there is great blessing. While in Judah there is great blessing, on the other hand, Judah represents a great curse.
As I have pointed out before, Satan and his children intrude (that is: horn in, butt in, chisel in, cut in) at every critical era of history. Because the Messiah was to come through Judah, Satan and his children intrude or direct their attack at Judah. Satan made his first attack in seducing Eve, trying to adulterate Yahweh’s pure Seed-line. Bathshua, in her Satanic inbred nature, attacked Judah personally by seducing him to corrupt the pure Seed-line of the promised Redeemer. If you don’t understand the war of the seed-lines, you miss the whole theme of the Scriptures. Well, the Satanic forces, through the descendants of Cain, would once again attack Judah. This attack came and can be found in 1st Chronicles 2:55 which reads thusly:
“And the families of the scribes which dwelt at Jabez; the Tirathites, the Shimeathites, and Suchathites. These are the Kenites that came from Hemath, the father of the house of Rechab.”
At first sight this may not appear much like an attack on the Tribe of Judah, but let’s take a good look at it. What do we have here? The entire 2nd chapter of 1st Chronicles from the end of verse 3, starting with verse 4 is the pure genealogy of Judah with one exception. Everything from the end of verse 3 to and including verse 54 is a genealogy of the true descendants of Judah. Then in verse 55 we have added on to Judah’s genealogy some descendants of Cain! How do we know this? The word Kenite in verse 55 above is #7017 in the Strong’s Concordance and means descendants of Cain. Well, why are Cain’s descendants listed here under Judah’s genealogy? Its the same old story, they are trying to horn in and pollute the Seed-line of Judah so they can destroy the bloodline of the Messiah. If you don’t understand the two seed-lines, you just cannot understand the Bible and what it is all about. I will now prove who these Kenites were and where they came from. To clear up this situation, I will quote some of the research I did on this in my booklet, Research Papers Proving Two-Seedline Seduction Of Eve. These are references out of standard commentaries and I didn’t use all the references that I have on this. I will use bullets to indicate what I lifted from my booklet:
· At this time, quoting from The Zondervan Pictorial Encyclopedia of the Bible, volume 3, page 782:
“KENITES ... meaning (metalworkers, smiths). Clan or tribal name of semi-nomadic peoples of South Palestine and Sinai. The Aramaic and Arabic etymologies of the root gyn show that it has to do with metal and metal work (thus the Hebrew word from this root, ‘lance’). This probably indicates that the Kenites were metal workers, especially since Sinai and Wadi ‘Arabah were rich in highgrade copper ore. W. F. Albright has pointed to the Beni Hassan mural in Egypt (19th century B.C.) as an illustration of such a wandering group of smiths. This mural depicts thirty-six men, women and children in characteristic Semitic dress leading along with other animals, donkeys laden with musical instruments, weapons and an item which Albright has identified as a bellows. He has further noted that Lemech’s three children (Genesis 4:19-22) were responsible for herds (Jabal), musical instruments (Jubal), and metal work (Tubal-Cain, or Tubal, the smith), the three occupations which seem most evident in the mural.”
· 2nd quote from the same article:
“The early monarchy. During this period a significant concentration of Kenites was located in the southern Judean territory. This is clear from 1 Samuel 15:6 cited above and also from David’s relations with them.”
· 3rd quote from the same article:
“Postexilic references. In 1 Chronicles 2:55 the families of the scribes living at Jabaz are said to be Kenites. Apparently, during the kingdom and exile periods, certain Kenites had given up nomadic smithing and had taken on a more sedentary, but equally honorable profession of scribe.”
· Peake’s Commentary on the Bible, page 114, has this to say about the name of the Kenites:
“The etymology of the name suggests that they were smiths or artificers, a theory which is supported by their association with the Wadi ‘Arabah, where there were copper deposits which had been worked by the Egyptians since the middle of the 3rd millennium.”
· Peake’s Commentary on the Bible, page 181, we have more on the name of the Kenites:
“The name Cain is generally taken by Semitic philologists to mean ‘smith’, and regarded as the patronymic of the Kenite clan of smiths.”
· The Jamieson, Fausset & Brown Commentary On The Whole Bible has this to say on Kenite, page 293:
“The families of the scribes — either civil or ecclesiastical officers of the Kenite origin, who are here classed with the tribe of Judah, not as being descended from it, but as dwellers within its territory, and in a measure incorporated with its people.”
· The Matthew Pool’s Commentary On The Holy Bible has this to say on the Kenites, volume 1, page 778:
“The Scribes; either civil, who were public notaries, who wrote and signed legal instruments; or ecclesiastical ... and are here mentioned not as if they were of the tribe of Judah, but because they dwelt among them, and probably were allied to them by marriages, and so in a manner incorporated with them. Which dwelt, or rather, dwelt; Hebrew, were dwellers. For the other translation, which dwelt, may seem to insinuate that these were descendants of Judah, which they were not; but this translation only signifies their cohabitation with them, for which cause they are here named with them.”
Here is where these Pharisees, Sadducees and SCRIBES which Yahshua pointed out as being of their father the devil came from. When He said to them in Matthew 23:35 and John 8:44:
· Matthew 23:35:
“That upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel unto the blood of Zacharias son of Barachias, whom ye slew between the temple and the altar.”
· John 8:44:
“Ye are of your father the devil, and the lust of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it.”
Now that we have proved that the scribes, Pharisees and Sadducees of Yahshua’s time were descendants of Cain fathered by Satan himself (except for a few proselytes), we are faced with another problem. That problem being there are many in the Identity message who are proclaiming there is no Satan or devil! This is a very serious teaching and needs to be exposed. Those people teaching the “Jews” are a religion rather than a race are aiding and abetting these Satanic “Jews”. The “Jews” just love to be identified as a religion rather than a race. The “Jews” are made up of many races, but they have one common denominator, and that is they all have the race of Cain’s Satanic blood in them. I will now quote from The Hidden Tyranny which is called “The Rosenthal Document.” Harold Wallace Rosenthal, in a lengthy interview opened up and bragged about the Jewish position. At one point he said this:
“We can live among other nations and states only as long as we succeed in persuading them that the Jews are not a distinct people, but are the representatives of a religious faith who, therefore, constitute a ‘religious community,’ though this be of a peculiar character. As a matter of fact, this is the greatest of our falsehoods.”
So you just keep telling everybody that the “Jews” are a religion rather than a generation, (race) of vipers, and you will be helping their Satanic cause. Believe me, Ted R. Weiland, Stephen E. Jones, James W. Bruggeman and Charles Weisman are helping the “Jew’s” cause. Well, just keep sending them your money and they can continue to help the “Jews” some more! Don’t forget Pete Peters too! We will address this very serious false doctrine of no Satan at this time.
THE DOCTRINE OF NO SATAN
There was a booklet entitled Satan Dispelled by a person with a pen name of Kalamos. This 46 page booklet was widely distributed by Sheldon Emry of America’s Promise of Phoenix, Arizona. Probably many of you have this booklet in your library. I am not going to dwell on this booklet very long, but I want to give you an example of how phony it is. We will go to the first unnumbered page entitled “Publisher’s Comment” and quote a small section as follows:
“I was particularly interested in a study of ‘the devil’ in Jude 9, which was a problem to me. A few hours of reading, studying, and discussion not only cleared the passage for me, but gave me the joy and delight of a better understanding of the Scripture and of God Himself, so greatly needed today. See Appendix A.”
Well, let’s go to Appendix A, on page 40:
“APPENDIX A: THE BODY OF MOSES...
“Yet Michael, the archangel [chief messenger] when contending with the devil [adversary] he disputed about the body of Moses durst not bring against him a railing accusation but said. The Lord [Yahweh] rebuke thee [Jude 9].
“This is not to be taken as having reference to the physical body of Moses any more than the physical body of Christ is referred to in 1 Cor. 12:27-30. Moses’ ‘body’ here was the selected group of men ‘of ability’ (Ex. 18:21) serving as judges over the people under the supervision of their chief messenger (agent), Moses. Verse 9 of Jude obviously refers to Num. 16, where Korah disputed with Moses regarding Moses’ authority. Korah was the ‘devil-adversary’ of Jude 9.”
Here is a good example of a person getting a brainstorm and setting up a false premise. This passage (Jude 9) has nothing to do with 1st Corinthians 12:27-30, Exodus 18:21 or the person of Korah named above.. To show you what Jude 9 is really all about, I am going to quote from two commentaries on the subject:
· Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary On The Whole Bible, page 1519:
“9, Michael, the archangel — Nowhere in the Scripture is the plural used, ‘archangels’; but only one, ‘archangel.’ The only other passage in the New Testament where it occurs, is 1 Thessalonians 4:16, where Christ is distinguished from the archangel, with whose voice He shall descend to raise the dead; they therefore err who confound Christ and Michael. The name means Who is like God? In Daniel 10:13 he is called ‘One (Margin, the first) of the chief princes.’ He is the champion angel of Israel. In Revelation 12:7 the conflict between Michael and Satan is again alluded to, about the body of Moses — his literal body. Satan, as having the power of death, opposed the raising of it again, on the ground of Moses’ sin at Meribah, and his murder (execution) of the Egyptian. That Moses’ body was raised, appears from his presence with Elijah and Jesus (who were in the body) at the Transfiguration: the sample and earnest of the coming resurrection-kingdom, to be ushered in by Michael’s standing up for God’s people.”
· The Wycliffe Bible Commentary, page 1488:
“9. Jude amplifies his plea for reverence by citing the apocryphal story of Michael and the devil, taken from the pseudepigraphical Assumption of Moses. Although Jude quoted both this book and Enoch, it is not a supportable inference that he ascribed canonical status or historicity to them.”
What this last statement is saying is: because the pagans at The First Ecumenical Or General Council Of Nicaea, A.D. 325 didn’t approve of the above mentioned books they were not included in their “Canon.” Anyway, the person who wrote this “Publisher’s Comment” didn’t know what they were talking about on the subject of Jude 9 as it has nothing to do with 1 Cor. 12:27-30, Ex. 18:21 or the person of Korah. The rest of the book is in the same vein and not worth any more comment, but I can assure you it has a lot of holes of the same nature in it. Of course, she mentions that Pastor Sheldon Emry of Phoenix, Arizona, had some influence on her thought. It is also interesting, on the last page (46) is advertised for sale at $4.00 a “Concordant Literal New Testament” translation. This is where Stephen E. Jones and Micheal Wark got their Universalism from! The full name of that outfit was the Concordant Publishing Concern, 15570 West Knochaven Drive, Saugus, California, 91350. So we know, at this point, that Sheldon Emry along with Stephen E. Jones were not only one seed-liners, Universalists, but also no Satan proponents. This should give you a pretty good idea where all the garbage is coming from.
CHARLES WEISMAN DISPELS SATAN
I am now going to quote a short passage from Charles Weisman’s lecture which he gave to “disprove” the Two Seed-line doctrine. Weisman gave this lecture at a Pete Peters’ camp retreat, so we can know just where Peters stands on this issue as he praised the work of Weisman very highly. When you listen to the words of Charles Weisman on this subject, you are hearing the same words of Stephen E. Jones, Ted R. Weiland and James Bruggeman for they can all be lumped into one basket, if you have heard one of them on this subject, you have heard them all. That is why James W. Bruggeman printed Ted R. Weiland’s disgusting article, “Eve: Did She? or Didn’t She”, in Bruggeman’s Kingdom Journal in the Spring issue, 1998. This is what Charles Weisman had to say about Satan:
“...Now the identifying of this serpent with the term Satan or devil can be somewhat confusing since these terms can be ascribed to many different things. First, such as the angel of God was a Satan against Balaam, Numbers 22:22. David was a Satan or advisory to the Philistines, 1st Samuel 29:4. People are called devils who are slanderers, 1st Timothy 3:11. And people are called devils who are called false accusers, Titus 2:3. Judas was called a devil. Peter was called a Satan. The terms devil and Satan are used to refer to evil in general, or to sin, or to the enemy. Corrupt political religious systems or authorities are called Satan. Man’s lust or carnal nature can be called the devil. Thus these words, devil and Satan, are not given one singular meaning in usage throughout Scripture; nor is the word serpent. But that is how Christendom has always treated them and interpreted them. So, even though these words, devil and Satan, were applied to this serpent of Genesis 3:15, which is now destroyed, they are applied to many other things as well. Thus the terms, devil and Satan, are still used, and still can be used as well as the term serpent. But they cannot be used in reference to the serpent of Genesis 3:15 still existing. So whatever this serpent was, it is at an end; or at least its power is certainly at an end. ...”
LET’S TAKE THE CONFUSION OUT OF IDENTIFYING SATAN!
To clear up just what these terms, Satan, devil, serpent and old dragon mean, I am going first to The Zondervan Pictorial Encyclopedia of the Bible, volume 5 Q-Z, and quote from their article on Satan on page 282:
“1. References to Satan. 1. In the Old Testament. Without the article the Hebrew term Satan has the general meaning of ‘an adversary,’ ‘an enemy.’ Thus in 1 Samuel 29:4 it is used of David as a possible enemy in battle; in 1st Kings 11:14, 23, 25 it designates political adversaries to Solomon; in Numbers 22:22 it is applied to the angel of the Lord who opposed Balaam. In Psalm 109:6 it is used of a human accuser. With the article, ‘the Adversary,’ it becomes a proper name and denotes the personal Satan.”
I will next quote from Insight On The Scriptures, volume 2, page 866, published by “Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society.” On this particular subject, they do a good job — they do have a few areas where they know what they are talking about and this is one of them because there are many other sources that agree:
“SATAN [Resister] In many places in the Hebrew Scriptures, the word sa-tan’ appears without the definite article. Used in this way, it applies in its first appearance to the angel that stood in the road to resist Balaam as he set out with the objective of cursing the Israelites. (Nu 22:22, 32). In other instances it refers to individuals as resistors of other men. (1Sa 29:4; 2 Sa 19:21, 22; 1 Ki 5:4; 11:14, 23, 25). But it is used with the definite article ha to refer to Satan the devil, the chief Adversary of God. (Job 1:6; ftn; 2:1-7; Zec 3:1.2). In the Greek Scriptures the word sa-ta-nas’ applies to Satan the Devil in nearly all of its occurrences and is usually accompanied by the definite article, ho.”
Now I will quote another witness on this from The Pictorial Bible Dictionary published by Wheaton College, Wheaton, Illinois, page 755:
“SATAN (satan; Hebrew satan, Greek Satán or Satanás, an adversary), the chief of the fallen spirits, the grand adversary of God and man. Without the article the Hebrew word is used in a general sense to denote some one who is an opponent, an adversary; thus, the angel who stood in Balaam’s way (Num. 22:22); David as a possible opponent in battle (1 Sam. 29:4); a political adversary (1 Kings 11:14). With the definite article prefixed it is a proper noun in Job 1-2, Zechariah 3:1-2, designating Satan as a personality. In Psalm 109:6 the article is lacking, and reference may be to a human adversary (cf. AVS ‘an adversary’), but it is generally conceded that in 1 Chronicles 21:1 the word is a proper name without the article. The teaching concerning evil and a personal devil finds its full presentation only in the New Testament. In the New Testament the term Satan, translated from the Hebrew, always designates the personal Satan (but cf. Matt. 16:23; Mark 8:33). The malignant foe is known in the New Testament by a number of other names and descriptive designations. He is frequently called ‘the devil’ (Greek diábolos), meaning the slanderer (Matt. 4:1; Luke 4:2; John 8:44; Eph. 6:11; Rev. 12:12 etc.). (‘Devils’: in KJV and ERV is properly ‘demons’). Other titles or descriptive designations applied to him are ‘Abaddon’ or ‘Apollyon’ (Rev. 9:11); ‘Accuser of the brethren’ (Rev. 12:10); ‘Adversary,’ Greek antídikos (1 Pet. 5:8); ‘Beelzebub’ (Matt 12:24); ‘Belial’ (II Cor. 6:15); ‘the deceiver of the whole world’ (Rev. 12:9); ‘the great dragon’ (Rev. 12:9) ‘the evil one’ (Matt. 13:19, 38; 1 John 2:13; 5:19); ‘the father of lies’ (John 8:44); ‘the god of this world’ (II Cor. 4:4); ‘a murderer’ (John 8:44); ‘the old serpent’ (Rev. 12:9); ‘the prince of this world’ (John 12:31; 14:30); ‘the prince of the powers of the air’ (Eph. 2:2); ‘the tempter’ (Matt. 4:5; 1 Thess. 3:5).”
EVERYTHING HINGES ON THE ARTICLE!
You can see from all of this, we have to know if the article is there or if the article isn’t there to understand if it is speaking of Satan himself, or if, it is just used as a figure of speech. This bring us back to our high school days and those long dull exercises of the English language. To refresh your memory on what an article is, I am going to quote from a set of books entitled Practical English published by Career Institute, Volume 1, section 2, page 6:
“The words a, an and the are adjectives although in grammar they are called articles. The word the is called the definite article. The words a and an are called the indefinite articles. When we say, the book on the table, we are pointing out a particular book on a particular table. When we say, I have a book, no specific or particular book is indicated.”
The World Scope Encyclopedia, volume 1, under Article says: “Article ..., in grammar, one of a class of limiting adjectives, which embrace the adjective elements, a, an and the. A is used before consonant sounds and an before vowel sounds; both are called indefinite articles, because they refer to any one of two or more objects. The is called the definite article.”
The Reader’s Digest Great Encyclopedic Dictionary, page 1933, has this to say about what an article is: “article A special form of adjective. ‘The’ is called the definite article. ‘A’ and ‘an’ are indefinite articles.”
The Encyclopedia Americana, 1948 edition, volume 1, page 357, says this of Article: “Article, in grammar, a part of speech used before nouns to limit or define their application. In the English language a or an is the indefinite article (the latter form being used before a vowel sound) and the the definite article. The English indefinite article is really a modified form of the numeral adjective one; so the German ein and the French un stand for the numeral and the article. There are traces in various languages showing that the definite article was originally a pronoun; thus the English the is closely akin to both this and that. The Latin language has neither the definite nor the indefinite article; the Greek has the definite; the Hebrew and Arabic definite article was prefixed to its noun, while on the other hand, in the Syriac and Chaldee it was affixed to the noun, as it is in the Icelandic. In the Scandinavian language the definite article is appended to the end of the word as hus-et, the house. There is no article in Russian.”
Why is it so necessary to stress the use of the article, when we study the Scriptures? For one reason, if we don’t know about the use of the article, whether it is there or absent, we cannot know what the Scriptures are saying. Not only do we have to know what the article means in English, but we have to understand the article in Hebrew and Greek. With the definite article, the Scriptures are speaking of a genuine personal devil or Satan. Now there is one language which the Bible was translated into which doesn’t have an article and that is Latin. Does this create problems? — you bet it creates problems. In the book, Latin For Americans, First Book, published by The Macmillan Company, page 413, says this: “Article — definite (the), indefinite (a, an). There is no word in Latin for ‘the’ or ‘a’.”
It is now a pretty well known fact that the New Testament was originally written in Aramaic (a form of Hebrew), then translated into Greek, then Latin, then German and English. Question: how did the German and English translators know where to include the article and what kind of an article to use if they were coming directly off the Latin? Are you beginning to see how important it is to go back to the original languages? And one of the most important things we have to do when we go back to the original languages is to recognize the article and we have the article in both the Hebrew and the Greek. The difference can be the difference between a real genuine personal devil or someone who is acting like a devil. This is exactly how Charles Weisman, Stephen E. Jones, Ted R. Weiland and James W. Bruggeman are confusing the issue and promoting a no devil doctrine. In all of their teachings (what I have heard and read of them), I have never heard them mention the word article one time or even try to explain what it means in the Scriptures. I think they really don’t know — they all probably missed school the days that the English teacher was explaining articles.
ALL IS NOT LOST!
I am now going to show you how you can quickly recognize an article in the Scriptures (especially the Old Testament), but first I must tell you a story. Everything in history has a reason and Yahweh has worked out history for the advantage of His people. I am going to talk here just a little bit about the Septuagint translation of the Old Testament. After the exploits of Alexander the Great, most of the territory he conquered became a Greek speaking people. In Alexandria, Egypt there was a faction of Greek speaking “Jews.” These Greek speaking “Jews” decided they needed a Greek translation of the Old Parchments. I will not go into the details here how they finally accomplished their Greek translation, but when it was finished, it became known as the Septuagint (the seventy or LXX). Here is the important part: when they translated from the Hebrew and Chaldee into Greek, they changed the Hebrew and Chaldee articles into Greek articles and we still have them that way in our Bibles today! I don’t know whether you are aware of it or not, but many of the words in our Old Testament are in Greek and the definite article is part of those Greek words. The definite article word “the” is the same in the Old Testament as it is in the New Testament — it is the Greek word #3588. In fact every word “the” in the Old Testament is this Greek word — you can check it in the appendix of the Strong’s Concordance and you will find it to be so. So when you read the serpent in Genesis 3:1, 3, 4, 13, 14, you can know that it is the definite article with the exception of passages like “the serpent of brass” in Numbers 21:9 as an example.
Let’s take a look at this Greek word #3588 in the Strong’s Concordance:
3588. ὁ ho,ho; (masculine) including the feminine,
ἡ he,hay; and the neuter,
τό to,to, in all their inflections; the definite article; the (sometimes to be supplied, at others omitted in English idiom): the, this, that, one, he, she, it, etc.
You can see, here, sometimes the definite article can also be this, that, one, he, she and it. Most often, though, the definite article from the Greek is the word the in the English. It seems that we always have to have some exceptions to the rule. You will also notice that the definite article is sometimes there without the word the.
I hope I don’t lose you at this point, but we have to go a step farther when speaking of an article. Articles are a type of adjective that changes or modifies the meaning of a noun (name of an object or person). The next thing we must consider is that there are two kinds of nouns: (1) a common noun and (2) a proper noun. Common nouns are like book, chair, table, desk, city, ocean, lily, tiger etc. Proper nouns are like John Adams, Daniel Morgan, Lake Michigan, Lake Louise and Satan in the Scripture. As a general rule, proper nouns are capitalized and common nouns are not. In English, proper nouns (which include personal names), do not need word “the”, (the definite article), in front of the noun to make it mean a definite particular person, place or thing. A personal name is a proper noun and is already definite in the English, and is capitalized to indicate it is a proper noun. But in Greek, the proper noun can have the definite article before the proper noun. Such examples are the Michael, the Isaac, the Tamar, the Herod, the John, and when translated into English is just simply Michael, Isaac, Tamar, Herod or John. That is why, in the Bible, it will say: the devil, the serpent or Satan in English.
Now Let’s read Revelation 12:9 in English, and I will put the Greek article in bold type:
“And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, (the adversary) which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.”
In the Greek, it reads a little differently and the article is a little different than in English (this is from the Emphatic Diaglott — Green’s Interlinear reads very similar.)— let’s take a look at it:
“And was cast the dragon the great, the serpent the old, the one being called accuser, and [the] adversary, the one deceiving the habitable whole, was cast into the earth, and the messengers of him with him were cast.”
Actually there are twenty four forms of the Greek article. The forms we are most interested in here are the basic ὁ, ἡ and τό shown in the Greek word #3588 from the Strong’s Concordance above. The ὁ is Masculine, the ἡ is Feminine and the τό Neuter. In Greek you will find the ὁ with the name of a man, the ἡ with the name of a woman and the τό with the name of a place or object other than man or woman. Our purpose, in this lesson, is to prove with the Greek definite article there is a genuine person known as Satan. At this time, it should be pointed out that in the Greek there is no indefinite article, only the definite article. In the book, New Testament Greek Study Aids by Walter Jerry Clark, it is explained like this:
“The Article. Also closely related to the noun is the article. ‘If it is desired to represent the thing designated by the noun as particular or known, we may use the article’ (Dana and Mantey, Manual Grammar). In English we have both the definite article (‘the’) and an indefinite article (‘a’ or ‘an’). Greek, however has only the definite article and is therefore referred to simply as ‘the article.’ There are two general rules which it will be helpful for us to know when dealing with the article. These are: the presence of the article denotes the noun as a definite or particular in some sense, and the absence of the article indicates the noun as either indefinite or qualitative. There are exceptions and qualifying circumstances to these rules, but these are the simplest and most common uses of the article.”
Charles Weisman, in his tirade, tried to make it appear that all passages with the word devil or Satan were just a figure of speech. The only way you are going to be able to determine if it is a real person or a figure of speech is to go to the original language. You are not going to get it wholly out of the KJV or any other Bible. I am not an expert in the Greek language, but with the aid of the Emphatic Diaglot, Green’s Interlinear and the Greek to English Interlinear by George Ricker Berry, I can read the Greek definite article wherever it is in the New Testament in its twenty four forms . And for the New Testament, at least, I have to admit that the Emphatic Diaglott is the better of the three even if it is published by the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society. Maybe you could find one in a used book store if you want to start studying the article in the Greek language. I really recommend the Emphatic Diaglott to get started.
Now, we will look at a few Scriptures to determine if the definite article is there or not. We already did Revelation 12:9. We will next look at John 8:44 and I will put the definite article from the Greek in bold type:
“Ye are of your father (the father the accuser) the devil, and the lust of your father (of the father of you) ye will do. He was a murder from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie (the falsehood), he speaketh of his own (of the own): for he is a liar, and the father of it.”
Jude 9: “Yet (the) Michael the archangel, when contending with the devil he disputed about the body of Moses, durst not bring against him a railing accusation, but said, The Lord rebuke thee.”
Luke 10:18: “And he said unto them, I beheld Satan (the adversary) as lightning fall from (the) heaven.”
Matthew 12:26: “And if (the) Satan cast out (the) Satan, he is divided against himself; how shall then his (º feminine the) kingdom stand? (Isn’t that interesting? Satan’s kingdom is a feminine kingdom!)”
Matthew 4:1: “Then was (the) Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil.”
I could go on and on and give you thousands of examples of where the Greek article is and where the Greek article isn’t, but now I will give you a couple of examples where there is an absence of the Greek article. This will be an example of the word Satan. Because the Greek article is not present in the following passages when speaking of Satan, the word Satan should not be capitalized. In almost every Bible I found (and I have about 50 of them) in every case Satan was capitalized. I did find, though, two Bibles which did not capitalize the word (in this case) “satan”. These translators understood the significance the absence of the Greek article.
The New American Bible by Thomas Nelson Publishers © 1976, Matthew 16:23:
“Jesus turned on Peter and said, ‘Get out of my sight, you satan! You are trying to make me trip and fall. You are not judging by God’s standards but by man’s’.”
The Saint Joseph Edition of the Holy Bible, OT, (Confraternity-Douay, & NT, (Confraternity Version — a Catholic Bible) © 1950, 1952,1954 and 1963, Matthew 16:23 and Mark 8:33:
Matthew 16:23: “He turned and said to Peter, ‘Get behind me satan, thou art a scandal to me; for thou dost not mind the things of God, but those of men’.”
Mark 8:33: “But he, turning and seeing his disciples, rebuked Peter, saying, ‘Get behind me, satan for thou dost not mind the things of God, but those of men’.”
But you may ask: “What does this have to do with Judah?” — It has everything to do with Judah! We can know from this lesson that there is a real and personal Satan — that Satan seduced Eve in the Garden and produced Cain — that the descendants of Cain are literally devils in shoe leather. As a result, we have Satan himself and his children, the “Jews!” We can know this for certain by understanding the article! Not only this, but we can know that these devils attached themselves to the Tribe of Judah and thank Yahweh that only a small fraction of Judah mixed with these Canaanite devils. Thus we have the good figs of Judah and the rotten figs of Judah! This story of Judah is getting more complicated as we continue.
For those who want to get started right away on the Greek article, I am going to include the following chart to make it easier to recognize it in all of its forms. You will want to hang on to this chart as all the Greek interlinears do not give you this information on how to recognize the article. With this chart, you will not only be able to recognize the article, but what form the article is in. Once you learn about and how to read the article, it’s going to be a little harder for some of these religious shysters to put something over on you. There may be some of you who might want to go on to learn to read and speak the Greek language. Learning the Greek article is a good place to get started. If, though, you never get beyond the stage of recognizing the article, you will have mastered much of your Bible.
Note: The chart was only included with the original lesson. There are many Greek study books where this information can be found.
(Revised 2-14-2001)
