Our understanding of good and evil is different than God’s. But can the angelic hosts themselves be deceived away from good and prompted toward evil?
In a sermon, Jonathan Cahn uncovered the mystery surrounding the inverted angel and how this entity connects to the struggle between good and evil.
“The word ‘Satan’ means one who goes against, who opposes,” Cahn says. “He’s the one who turns against existence. He’s not an enemy; he’s the enemy.”
Satan was an angel before he rebelled against God and was thrown out of heaven. Now, he is the ultimate source of perversion, turning good things into wicked things. The name ‘Satan’ even refers back to the word, ‘diabolis.’ Cahn says this means he is one who sends out attacks at an opponent. And while the enemy exists to steal, kill and destroy, it is key to know that Satan does not act as an equal counter-partner to God. Instead, what Satan does is take the good and twist it around into something heinous.
“It’s an inversion of the good. It’s a parasitic version,” Cahn says. “So, it’s not God versus a god. It’s an angel created against God, the creation against the Creator, which comes from sin.”
The goal of Satan as the “inverted angel” is to turn God’s people away from what is pure and noble.
Breaking News. Spirit-Filled Stories. Subscribe to Charisma on YouTube now!
“God created life; the enemy seeks to destroy life. He seeks destruction,” Cahn says. “He’s the inverter to turn the creation away from God…he tries to invert, twist [and] turn it away from its purpose, then it’s going to destroy itself.”
This means it is Satan’s highest goal to twist God’s Word in hopes that it will bring destruction onto us as the ones created in God’s image.
Satan is the master of temptation and the twisting of something good for his own greedy plans. As Cahn points out, Satan went to the extreme in Luke 4 where he tempted Jesus. In this part of Scripture, we see Satan using the very Word of God, out of context and manipulated, to try to make Jesus fall.
“He’s trying to invert the Messiah, invert the Son of God, inverted God Himself,” Cahn says. “That would be God worshiping the creation, a twisted creation. That would be good worshiping evil. That’s what the enemy tries to do and by doing that he wars against life.”
For Christians, it is imperative to know that God is not only bigger than the enemy, but that He is the pathway to life. Using wisdom and discernment according to God’s precepts is vital for staying out of the snares of the enemy. Reading Scripture in its correct context and communing with the Lord are ways we can move away from the whispers of the enemy and toward the goodness of God.
Join Charisma Magazine Online to follow everything the Holy Spirit is doing around the world!
Abby Trivett is a content development editor for Charisma Media.
