“A city set on a hill cannot be hid” is one of the iconic sayings of Yeshua of Nazareth.  It addresses the unmistakable visibility of anything he causes to stand up. If Christ said you are light, you will stand out as light.  You do not have to imagine how many people contradict that statement with their speculations and their surmising.  “Oh my God Satan’s dead” is an exclamation that we are going to hear in the bye and bye, but a more confusing exclamation addresses the destruction of the Devil’s work: more confusing because people want to act as if it’s not true.

Works destroyed

It is finished (spoken by Yeshua from the cross) is another saying opposed by people who think they’re pretty smart. All the people who want to send demons to hell, and they want to literally kill demons are obviously in the grip of a demonic delusion. Christ has allowed the appropriate amount of demons to run loose in the world, while the others are under house arrest in Tartarus (2 Peter 2:4).  The text indicates that defeated angels are reserved for judgment (κρίσις, krisis), i.e. their condition – tartarused – is not final.

The extent to which we can take “destroyed the works of the devil” is not a mystery.  Are we willing to apply what the text says?

7) Little children, make sure no one deceives you; the one who practices righteousness is righteous, just as He is righteous; 8) the one who practices sin is of the devil; for the devil has sinned from the beginning. The Son of God appeared for this purpose, to destroy the works of the devil. (1 John 3:7-8)

How was sin – the perennial work of the devil – destroyed if not by the cross, and why does Christian occupation with sin, as if it has not been decisively routed, continue as a tool for discrimination and doctrinal terrorism by those who see themselves as victorious over sin?

Beyond deception

The puritans and reformers of the 21st century can be found giving themselves outlandish names.  Whatever happened to simplicity? Since when was “Church of Christ in Mecca” not perfectly acceptable? Or when did churches stop being named after Christ/God and the locality? Their experience is beyond being deceived: they commit to deceive others to assert their inventions.

The benchmarks of evil’s augmentation are extant in the hub of deception; deceiving and being deceived, planôntes kai planômenoi.

But evil men and impostors will proceed from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived.

2 Timothy 3:13

They say we, believers, are not alive, but merely on life support. Since Christ has disarmed the

When you were dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made you alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our transgressions,

Colossians 2:13

They have a lineup of arguments to show that there still decrees that block the path of the justified.

having canceled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us, which was hostile to us; and He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross. (Colossians 2:14)

We are sure we died with Christ but they would have us live as always subject to some other authority.

If you have died with Christ to the elementary principles of the world, why, as if you were living in the world, do you submit yourself to decrees, such as, (Colossians 2:20) “Do not handle, do not taste, do not touch!” (Colossians 2:21)

On top of that, another witness of the Lord Jesus Christ, John, tells us that Christ destroyed the works of the devil, and so it is mindboggingly pathetic that people choose freedom and soon forget it.  While “Satan is dead” is something you might hear from the preachers of prosperity and positive thinking, the truth is that until our faith brings us to die once for all with Christ and until we rely exclusively on the apostolic witness we will never awake to life in Christ. The real surprise is in the “Oh no!” to the death of the person you used to be.  There is no going back to the works of the darkness and tradition.  You’re dead!  I’m dead!