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Did you know that Satan was almost never mentioned in the Old Testament? And he was always described as a person. He wasn’t some mystical, invisible force set out to destroy your life.

Yet, most people who believe in Satan hand their life over to him. Believing in him robs you of your power to change your life — regardless of which temptations you fall victim to.

The truth is, we are all our own satan. And when you figure out how to overcome yourself, you can finally get rid of all your nasty temptations and addictive tendencies.

In this episode, I reveal how understanding the true history of Satan can free you from your worst compulsive behaviors. Listen to the episode now.

Show highlights include:

  • The “10-Minute Rule” for destroying your stress before it snowballs and creates bigger problems (4:44)
  • The weird way believing Satan pulls invisible strings in your life and perpetuates your worst behaviors (6:56)
  • Why you’re not powerless to Satan’s wishes (and how to regain your power over him) (9:49)
  • How understanding the history of Satan helps you ditch your addictions, compulsive behaviors, and mental agony (17:58)
  • Why the human system deserves more blame for your temptations than The Devil (and why this is good news) (24:28)
  • How believing even one negative thing about yourself poisons everything you do (26:08)

If you want to radically change how much control you have over your emotions in as little as 20 days, you can go to https://thefreedomspecialist.com/feelbetternow and sign up for the Choose Your Own Emotion course.

If you or somebody you know is looking to drop the ‘F’ Bomb of freedom in your life and break free from addiction, depression, anxiety or anything that’s making you feel flat-out stuck, head over to https://thefreedomspecialist.com/ and book a call where we can look at your unique situation and give you the roadmap you’ve been missing.

If you’d like to buy a copy of my book, Is That Even Possible?: The Nuts and Bolts of Energy Healing for the Curious, Wary, and Totally Bewildered, you can find it on Amazon here: https://www.amazon.com/That-Even-Possible-Healing-Bewildered/dp/1512336041

Read Full Transcript

It's time to rip the cover off what really works to ditch addiction, depression, anger, anxiety, and all other kinds of human suffering. No, not sobriety. We're talking the F-word here: Freedom. We'll share, straight from the trenches, what we have learned from leaving our own addictions behind, and coaching hundreds of others to do the same—and since it's such a heavy topic, we might as well have a good time while we're at it. [00:27.6]

Bob: All right, welcome back to the Alive and Free podcast. Today, we are going to hit on another topic of biblical proportions, and you know, you don't have to necessarily agree or disagree with it, but I think it's, it's helpful sometimes to get a different sense of things. Today we're going to talk about the history of Satan. Now hold the phone, Bob, what do you mean the history of Satan? Well, I'll explain, but I want you first to think back to some of the things like when I was a kid born in 1980, there was no internet. There were no cell phones at the time. There may have been satellite phones or things used in the military, but there was no internet. There were no cell phones, there was television, but there weren't DVD players. I don't know if CDs were around at the time or if those came later, there were definitely records and eight tracks that were there. And there certainly weren't things called apps. Personal computers were still slow, were were still like very, very much in their infancy and they were huge. I remember the first computer that I got had a 30-gigabyte hard drive. I mean, my phone has a bigger hard drive or something like that. 256-megabyte hard drive. That was it. And that was like, that was it. That was tiny, tiny, tiny flash drives came out later. [01:48.3]

And so, when I was born, I was born in a world that lived at a slower pace. And the idea of an internet or an iPad or some like thing of glass and metal that I could just touch with my fingers, and it would open all kinds of stuff. May have sounded like some science fiction movie. And I wasn't, I wasn't like caught up in it, so to speak. And as a result, when it came around, I was still young enough to be able to learn how to use it, but I'm not controlled by the idea that this is permanent or this is the way things are, or this is like, this is the Summum bonum of existence. And I haven't accepted it as a fact as like, just, this is just reality. [02:24.0]

Whereas my children were born into an age where the internet and internet speed is a very, very real thing. I remember when you could go log onto the internet and like, listen to it, do its little ta-dang, ta-dang, ting, ting khhh…kuhhh, all that stuff. And you could go like, get yourself a drink, or a snack from the fridge, or maybe do a load of laundry while your computer was hooking up to the internet. And nowadays, as soon as it's up, if I click on a webpage and it's not there, the instantaneous reaction is like, wow, it's taking forever. This website is broken. If it takes like 10 seconds to load or three seconds to load, because of what we're accustomed to, because of what we take for granted, because of what we're used to. Now, I don't know when you were born. I don't know what things were around when you were born, but things have shifted considerably since I was born. [03:13.5]

And for many of you for my dad, like considerably still shifted because personal computers weren't around when he was born at all. And for my grandparents, like yeah, what kinds of things were, and weren't around like how many people had cars and all of those things and that breadth of view, that ability to see the beginning from the end also gives a different perspective on it and what they think is important and how to take care of things and, and all of that stuff, just because of the breadth of view. Often you and I, we, we look at things from a perspective of right here and right now, which I think is very, very helpful most of the time, but sometimes I think it's very helpful to step back and take a bigger perspective so that we don't lose a sense of where these things we're doing fit inside the hole. [03:56.2]

When I was learning to start studying scriptures and stuff, I had a professor sit there and harp on me on the class basically. And he would say, look, you need to read, read, read, and then ask questions and experience and then read some more. And he talked very, very clearly about this thing called close reading, which is, what are the words in the text? What is the order? What are the words used? What is their other meaning? How are they related to other things in the passages? What is the text actually saying and how is it related to itself? Basically, biblical Jesus. But then he would also say that you need to also be doing massive reading swaths of like the, just read through the whole book so that you have a big picture in which you're sticking these details. And so often we have these tiny details that show up in our lives of things happening, and we don't see them in the big picture. And so it feels like these tiny details just overwhelm us. [04:47.6]

This happens with stressors, things that people go, oh, wow, this is I'm really stressed and whatnot, because it's this tiny little detail, something that you think has happened and then it turns out it's not going to happen. And if you had waited 10 minutes, you wouldn't have had any of the stress in the first place. But we forget that because we're so used to instantaneous, everything happens, or it doesn't. And so, when it comes to the idea of Satan, I think it would be very helpful. And the reason I think it's helpful for, on a podcast like Alive and Gree is not because we're trying to eliminate anybody's religious beliefs at all, but we want them to be able to feel the freedom that comes from seeing things as they really are seeing things that are really there. And if it is true, then it shouldn't need any defense and it should stand the test of time, no matter what anybody else says about it. So, we shouldn't be worried about denying the truth or the truth somehow being offended, because we say something, this is just an opportunity to look at a bigger picture. And as a result, find a level of freedom and perspective that will allow you to navigate your life at a deeper level. [05:46.6]

Many, many of the people that we work with are Christian in relation, or they are religious in perspective and in lifestyle. And so, they have some sense of an enemy to God or a Satan that's there. And that, that Satan has dominion, and he has angels that are working for him. And that he's out to like really kind of wreck human beings and all of this other stuff. And, and this language certainly does appear in certain scriptural texts and whatnot. So, we're not going to say that it's not been around for a while as a concept or as an idea, but it's been developed over time to where, what we think of today as what Satan is. We just assume that's what it always was. Just like what we think of today, of what heaven is, we just assume that's what it always was to all the people who believed in heaven. Or what we think of today is what God is. We think that that's, we just assume that's what everybody always believed God to be. Because we believe it now, so it must have been the case. And when you start to peel back the layers on what people actually believed throughout history and what they actually said about these things, it reveals a very, very different picture and opens up the possibility to see the difference between conjecture and what might actually be true. [06:56.4]

Now, why would this be relevant to somebody struggling with addictive behaviors or compulsive behaviors or depression or anxiety or anything like that? Well, a lot of them have a lot of religious views about themselves and fear of being tempted, of being under attack by other things, and of having like some unseen, invisible enemy in their mind, that's out to get them. And that very idea of an unseen invisible enemy creates a feeling in their body, because every idea you have and that you entertain create something in your body to the degree that you hold it to be true, it does. And so, as a result, they feel like they're under attack from something unseen, invisible, that they'll never be more powerful than. And as a result, it tends to perpetuate the behavior because they literally believe that they're powerless. And so, they wander around creating a situation in their body where they are powerless, but that's not necessarily because it's true. They are powerful enough to create their own powerlessness. Let me repeat that. You are powerful enough to create your own powerlessness. How about we stop that? Okay. [08:01.4]

So, let's look at the history of Satan. The assumptions that we generally work on, or Satan is essentially like the king of hell or the underworld or outer darkness or whatever the version of that is in the tradition, the Christian tradition you grew up in. There's a lot of different Christian traditions and veins. Every major Christian religion has had so many splinter groups and variations on it at different interpretations of it. And often they end up fighting each other. But the general consensus is that there is an evil spirit who was somehow somewhere in the highest echelons of God's kingdom and who fell from heaven and was cast down either because of a war or something else. And as now roaming about the earth with his minions and his demons and whatnot, wreaking havoc upon the children of men in all sorts of ways. [08:48.1]

Now let me be clear if you believe that whether or not it's true, if you believe that your ability and your propensity to see that happening, or to feel like that is the case skyrockets. So much, that if you have any psychedelic experiences, it's possible that that would show up in your consciousness and you could interpret things in terms of the devil that doesn't make it true, that doesn't make it false. It makes it the production of your mind based on your beliefs, not necessarily based on your perceptions and perception itself is distorted heavily by belief as evidenced by the fact as reported in history of the native Americans, not even being able to see the ships that Columbus and, and whoever else was sailing in on, because it was outside of their ability to, to conceive of only after a bit then where they finally able to see that these weren't islands and clouds, but large masses of like, oh, that's a ship. They couldn't see the boat. Their perception was distorted by their beliefs and their consciousness about what was there and by their limitation of experience. [09:48.7]

So, as you're thinking about, oh, I'm being tempted, oh, Satan is out to get me, oh, there are other things outside of me that are pushing me to do this. I want to reframe that. And I want to help you see a different possibilities so that you recognize how much you are not powerless, so that you recognize just how much the ability is there for you to really step into a different level of possibility for your life and not feel like you will be susceptible to some invisible power, constantly fighting against you. I know that's common talk. I know a lot of people feel that way. And I know a lot of people seem to believe that they see evidence of that. But if we really scrutinize it, much of what people seem to believe they see is not really there. It's a belief, it's a feeling. And if we're asking the wrong questions, we might be held in to that and listen to the episode on questions a couple of weeks ago. All right, so we go back, we look at the history of Satan. [10:43.6]

Now the word Sataan in Hebrew means accuser or adversary. And as such, it is used in the Old Testament. Okay. In the Old Testament, that term is used 10 times, just 10. Not more than that, just 10 times. The term for adversary or accuser is used Satan. Yes, there are other terms used like bills above and whatnot. Those are actually borrowers and demotions of other deities from other near Eastern religions. And so, it's not necessarily a term for Satan that became a modern interpretation of it. If we're looking simply at the history and the origins of Satan itself, this term that is used, we have to go back to the term itself. Where was it used in the Bible? Guess what, in none of those 10 instances was it used necessarily as a particular person or a proper name except in one, which we'll get to. So, in nine out of the 10, it's not a particular person. It's not a popular entity. Six of them refer to actual human beings. One being David. King David himself was referred to as a satan or a Satan or an accuser or of Saul and Saul was afraid, he was going to take over his kingdom and whatnot, all right. [11:58.2]

Somebody in David's court, Abishag or I think is his name was also talked about as Satan or a Satan. And he was used in that way when, when alliance was made differently, and so he was seen that way. Solomon laments, that there aren't any more Satans for him to fight. We talked about Solomon a couple episodes ago, but there was no Satan with a capital S there was no devil, there were no demons, there wasn't even hell. In fact, in the beginning, God himself was the creator of both light and darkness and the light, even in Isaiah, as late as Isaiah, this is well after the creation period, as late as Isaiah and Isaiah 45:7 it's in the new standard revised version, right, it says ‘I formed light and create darkness. I make wheel and create wo I, the Lord do all these things.’ In the mind of the Hebrews, there wasn't a devil doing it. It was God doing all of it. There wasn't a heaven and a hell, it was all just the place where people go. The underworld comes from the verb to ask And it literally means like the asking place or the big question, mark. He went to the big question, mark. I don't know where he went to the beyond. That's it, that's all you're referring to. [13:20.5]

And then both profits were there and good people and bad people from the past. There was some seances and things that happened in the, in the Old Testament where they brought back an old prophet and there's evil spirits as well. And they all went to the same place. So, the whole concept of a devil in hell and all this stuff, isn't even in the mind of the Jews of the Old Testament. For most of the history of the entire Old Testament, it's not even there. Eventually it starts to show up. So, so we have six of the nine are just people, it refers to people, that's it. Eventually the idea of Satan as an adversary shows up in somewhere in the Persian period. Why? Well, because if you have God doing all of these things to these people, I mean, think about all the stuff that happened to the people in the Old Testament. If you have God doing that to all the people, pretty soon you have the same question that's been bandied about today, which is how can a loving God do that? The question of theodicy, how could a loving and benevolent God allow so much suffering and pain on the earth? Well, if this is inside the minds of the people, then all of a sudden, when there comes an answer, why wouldn't people start to stumble on to it? And that answer shows up in the Persian period, when there is the idea of an angry or evil spirit known as Angra Mainyu, that actually created death and disease and lies, he would be the father of lies. And that's where this idea comes from, right. [14:47.9]

And so now there's not, it's not God that's creating all this stuff, it's an angry spirit. The world is created by a loving God, but this angry spirit is the one that's creating all this other stuff. And that's adopted into the Jewish ideas in the beginning, it's adopted into it later on, right. And that is between like the Persian period is 539 BC to 332 BC. So, like we're talking Zoro Aster, which is where a lot of these Persian things came from was around 600 BC. 600 BC was when the Greeks, their civilization was starting to like come up on the rise. So, the Greek civilization is showing up at that point in time and not before then. There's a lot of things happening at that time, King Zedekiah is King of Israel. And so, like before that, there isn't really the sense that there is some devil or evil spirit that's doing things. So, then who was first called Satan? Obviously, we have all of these six Satan's that are there. Military adversaries, like, [inaudible], [inaudible] and things like that. And, but it's, and then sometimes in a legal proceeding where a Psalmus indicates that a slanderous opponent has been falsely accusing him of wrongdoing. [16:01.8]

So, in contrast to that, there are four other places where we have the terms Satan being used as an adversary, but not about humans. And the first one is actually in numbers, 22 with the whole dong talking donkey thing with Blaam. And God literally sends this angel down, just stand in the path of Balaam and to get the donkey talking and all that other stuff in that entire scenario. And the angel is called a Sataan, a Satan. And in this case, the Satan is literally a member of God's court who is sent to do God's bidding, if that makes sense. In other words, he's in God's retinue and while his job may not be the happiest job on the earth, he's out doing God's will. Now this shows up eventually up in the book of Job, and that's where you get Ha- Satan, which means ‘The Satan’ and still in the book of job, Satan plays the role like was played in the ancient near east by a lot of people have some guy who's on the Kings court, but his job is to kind of spy out where there's problem and make an accusation. He's like the tattle teller of the group. He's the safety inspector of the group. He's the hall monitor. Okay. And so, what you get in Job is, is Satan the hall monitor out there going like, I don't think Job is at [inaudible] as you think he is. And so, they do this thing, and it ends up just fine, but there's nothing against Satan. [17:21.9]

If you or someone you know is looking to drop the F-bomb of “Freedom” in their life, whether that's from past trauma, depression, anxiety, addiction, or any other host of emotional and personal struggles, but they just don't know how or wants some help doing it. Head on over to thefreedomspecialist.com/feelbetternow and check out some of the things we've got in store for you or book a call so we can look at your unique situation and get you the help that you're looking for. [17:50.0]

Then later, and Zafar Yahoo or Zechariah. In chapter three, you have Satan playing the role of an accuser where he's accusing in this vision of Joshua, where he sees himself standing before the heavenly court to be judged of his ability to serve as the high priest of Jerusalem. He's wearing dirty clothes, which means that the trial's probably nearing an end and the Ha-Satan has been able to make all of these valid points against him. Like, Hey, look, he's got all these dirty clothes, meaning some, possibly some symbol about things that are not necessarily in his favor, but God's still rebukes Ha-Satan and removes the dirty clothes of Joshua and so removes his guilt. So, this is the really the first time that any idea of Satan as in opposition to God, meaning being rebuked by God or in some way, an accusation by God shows up, that's it, right? This is the very, very first time in the entire Old Testament. And he's just a prosecutor where God is in the defense of Joshua and obviously the idea of your advocate with the father and all those things, and these legal proceedings show up later on. [18:01.0]

But so, this is in kind of a lead legal setting where Satan is the real opponent for God. So, this may be where the idea is planted, that Satan really is against Gulf. And then we have, from there, we finally have a passage in first Chronicle. Now, first Chronicles, even though it pretty much copies everything from the books of Samuels and stuff, it was written around 300 BC. So, by now, now they retell the same story, but now they insert a Satan into the story. So before and Samuel, Satan takes a census and God is upset with him because Satan, I mean, Sam, David, sorry, David takes a census of the kingdom and God's upset with him because of whatever reason, but David's offered forgiveness from God and exchange for three days of pestilence over the kingdom. [18:47.8]

So, in that story, David did it by himself, but now a couple of hundred years later, we have a retelling of the story. But now they say in first Chronicles that it was Satan, who was the one who incited David to take the sentence census, which is indicative of the kind of general trend of the people. Now note, if we're taking the history of the Jewish people over the course of time, what we're seeing is that in the beginning, there was no devil. There was no Satan. It's not in any of the texts. There's no sense of something like that. That shows up somewhere around the Persian period. And then in between the testaments, that's where you get a bunch of other apocalyptic writings show up where you have like them taking older passages, like the idea of the morning and the evening star and Lucifer and Satan being a general inhibit. Those ideas showed up in between the Old Testament and the New Testament in some of the literature. So that by the time Jesus shows up and comes on the scene and you have some of the New Testament ideas that are in place. Now they're starting to talk about Satan in a very different way or a demon or the king of demons, but they're still using bills above and they're using other things as well. [20:57.4]

So, I want you to see this history of Satan to recognize. First off, did you know that there really was no devil for a great many thousand years? Did you know that? that the idea of a devil is something that dawned on humanity on the Jewish population over time and then was refined over time, same with the ideas of heaven and hell. They weren't really, initially there were ideas that were developed over time. What does that do to your sense of who, who Satan is and what heaven and hell are? Does that start to make you possibly ask the question I'm like, okay, cool. If there is a Satan, maybe what we think we know about him or her isn't really all that accurate. Maybe a lot of the ideas that we've heard about him or her are folk tales that have been passed down culturally and ideas that then have been written about. So now it seems like it's true because someone wrote about it, but those ideas were formed over time. And maybe not, all of them are accurate. Like the idea that there is a war going on spiritually. Now there may or may not. I have not witnessed in my own life, a spiritual war happening anywhere on the planet. There are people that claim it. There are people that see it, but what they are doing is they are thinking something and experiencing something in their body. And then they are using words to describe that experience. I haven't witnessed it. That doesn't mean it's not there. And I'm totally open to the possibility that it's there nor have I witnessed somebody being tempted by a devil, haven't witnessed. It doesn't mean it doesn't happen. I'm just saying I haven't witnessed it. [22:28.2]

And so maybe just maybe there aren't that many, maybe there aren't that many devils running around who are so busy thinking, each of us are so important and worth their time that they're trying to put all their energy on us like the Screwtape letters of CS Lewis seems to make out. Again, a further development of the idea of Satan, thanks to CS Lewis is this notion of all the things that he's doing and all of the, all of the machinations in his mind and all this stuff, that is a development of human ideas, concentrating and thinking about a particular concept. Now, CS Lewis isn't necessarily scripture. Some people kind of quote it like it is, but maybe in a few hundred years, it will be the way things go. So then if we look at this and we say, okay, cool, well, whether there's a segment or not good, which I, I can't tell you because I haven't seen any other way. And I've been in some seances, and I've been in some exorcisms, and I've been in some experiences that you'd be like, okay, we cast some demons out and I can just tell you what I saw, what I perceived, what was there? I can't tell you whether there is or is not a Satan. I can tell you that. Well, not many people over time have talked about it for the initial several thousand years of human history. And it's been an idea that's developed over time. I can tell you that there are a lot of people that believe it. And I can tell you that when dealing with addiction or behaviors like this or things that people call spiritual maladies, they often speak of temptation. They often speak of being torn apart or entice to, to do something or seduced by the dark side and all of these flacks and cords that are put on you and like little, tiny chains and they get their hooks in you and they start to pull you down. [23:59.6]

And while that's a very vivid scenario, anybody that's dealing with that in any moment in order for me to help them get free of them, I have to help them see what's actually happening in that moment. And every single one of them comes to and realizes, oh, wait, that's not actually happening right now. And we're able to finally start as we start to break it apart piece through that thing. And then they get free of it. It's not because I unhooked a devil from their back pocket. It's because it literally wasn't there in the first place, they only believed it was. So cool, let's assume there's a Satan though. Let's assume there's a being out there just for kicks and grins. What would that Satan have to do in order to “tempt” you to start behaving and acting in ways that are not healthy? Let's look at the human system. Every human believes feels and acts in accordance with what they think is true. It doesn't matter if it's actually true. If you had a spider on your shirt, you'll react one way. If somebody makes you believe there's a spider on your shirt, you'll react a different way. I mean, you might react in the exact same way, but one in one case, there is a spider and another case, there isn't one. The behavior is the same, just because you believe that there's a spider there. And until you can see differently, then there's nothing that you can do to change that because it's the belief or feeling that that is the case that is controlling the behavior. [25:21.9]

So, what would Satan have to do to control your behavior? Well, he might need to get you to believe some things about yourself. He might need to get you to believe things like I am not good enough. I am a disappointment. I am weak. I am ugly. Nobody likes me. I'm unlovable. Nothing ever works out for me. Life is hard. Any of those things, if you begin to believe those things, what will happen? Your thoughts will come from them. Your emotions will come from them. Your physical reactions to things will come from them. You will not be able to control it because you will always act in accordance with what you believe to be true. You will always act in accordance with what you believe to be true. So, if you want yourself, if you want to go create addiction in somebody else, if you want to go create fear in somebody else, if you want to go manipulate their behavior, like parents like to do with kids, you have to get them to believe something. [26:25.5]

My dad believed. So, when he was young, my grandma was frustrated, vause they would like stir the ingredients for the bread and cakes and stuff and all different ways. And it was splashed on the counter. So, she told my dad when he was young, that you have to start only one direction, because if you start the other way, it'll come back apart into its different ingredients. And he believed her, he totally believed her. And that's all he did was stir one direction until he was 16 years old. And he tried it out and then, oh no, mom's a liar. Oh no and he discovered, oh wait, that's not actually the case. 16 years old. It took him until he was 16 to believe this. My sister, when I was, we just barely had a, a family vacation when I was younger, I was taking martial arts and stuff all the time anyway. And when I was in, in New Mexico, there was this idea. And we're talking about when you get to be a black belt, you have to register your hands as lethal weapons. She literally believed that I had to do that, even though that was never the case. And she believed it until literally like a week ago or a couple of weeks ago, because that's what just had been told to her and she never thought to question it. And so, her behavior and actions and the stories she told to people all conformed to what she thought was true. [27:35.8]

Well, what happens if you believe that you're not good enough or you're unlovable? We'll imagine that kid in grade school. I'm not good enough. How confident is that kid going to be in making new friends? Oh dear. Right? How confident are they going to be? The type of kid that tries to prove they're good enough and goes over the top and does extra credit? Are they going to dig in and be the type of kid that doesn't even try because they don't believe it's possible? They go out for a sports team. Are they even going to go out for a sports team if they believe they're not good enough? When they do, are they going to work extra hard or are they going to always feel like an outsider? Right. At home, when they get home, how do they interact with their parents? Are they avoiding them so that they don't get harped on? Are they making fun of them to kind of just like distract the conversation? Or are they like people pleasing and trying to be the good kid? [28:21.6]

When they grow up and they go and they're talking to God, and they believe they're not good enough, what are their prayers going to be like? When they're in a relationship or a marriage and their husband arrives like, Hey, you didn't take out the trash like I asked, are they going to implode? Because like, see, I'm really not good enough. Are they going to turn around and try and justify their behavior? Look, I've been busy all day. I've been working hard, all of these different things. Can you see how all you have to do is get a person to believe one negative thing about themselves and forever more they will be tempted and pushed and compelled to act in accordance with that. And then when they can't handle it anymore, they will reach for anything that will help alleviate that from them, from the nightmare of the belief that they've been carrying. And every addictive tendency is an attempt to wake a person up from their nightmare. And whether you're addicted to adrenaline, to caffeine, to hard drugs, to pornography, to getting on Facebook, to angry, yelling at things, to bingeing on Netflix, to whatever else it is, whatever the compulsive tendency drinking, you, name it, whatever the compulsive tendency is, it doesn't matter. Each one is an attempt to try and get you to wake up so you can finally feel more alive and free and allowed to be who you really are. Instead of the thing that you've believed that you are, that's where it comes from. [29:42.2]

So, if we're ending this up and we're wrapping up this discussion about Satan, I think it's really important to recognize that most of us are our own Satan. Most of us are our own accusers. Most of us beat ourselves up, we call ourselves name, we call our other people names. We are the Satans on the planet most of the time. And we give this invisible entity, all the power in our mind. And as a result, we feel powerless. When if we can really see what's going on, the ability to change shows up in a massive, massive way. Even Jesus called Peter Satan when Peter disagreed with him and was an adversary and accuser of Jesus and telling him that his plan for saving people was not the greatest idea and needed some adjustments. So even there, the role, the title of Satan is being applied by Jesus himself, not to a devil, but to a person. And that the only Satan in our life that we really need to overcome is us. And when you do that, I can just tell you from personal experience, literally there's, the temptation goes away. [30:43.8]

There is no temptation because you ceased to be your own tempter. You cease to be your own accuser. You ceased to beat yourself up and create the conditions that you need to escape from. That's what we want to build for people. Essentially, in one way, if you look at it, one way, what I do for people is finally helped them get rid of the Satan in their life that's costing them, all of this pain and suffering and misery. I teach them how to put it to rest. We help them figure out where it came from, what the belief was underneath it and the skills and the tools to finally be able to dismantle it and put it to rest. Whether or not there is a Satan out there. I am not one to be able to say, I have my own limited experience of life to be able to say one way or another, but I can say that in every circumstance that I have worked with and some of them you would think we're looking at exorcisms and stuff, what's really been going on is a person is in their own head, being their own Satan, beating their own selves up and trying to find a way out of that. You get rid of those beliefs, those thought processes, and suddenly all of the temptation vanishes that I speak from experience. [31:46.6]

And that's it for todays “Alive and Free Podcast.” If you enjoyed this show and want some more freedom bombs landing in your ear buds, subscribe right now at wherever you get your podcasts from. And, while you're at it, give us a rating and a review. It'll help us keep delivering great stuff to you. Plus, it's just nice to be nice. [32:04.8]

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