The Devil and His Activities
Scriptures of all religions testify to demonic beings and powers. Their chief is known by various names: Satan, Lucifer, Iblis, Mara, Samael, Beelzebub and Angra Mainyu, among others. Some of them we met in the accounts of the Human Fall and the origin of evil. Yet the Devil is continually active, drawing people’s hearts to do wickedness. While rationalists have difficulty accepting the reality of the Devil, a glance at the history of the twentieth century and its horrors makes plain that the capability of human beings to inflict evil on one another transcends reason. Pope Paul VI said of the Devil,
We know that this dark and disturbing spirit really exists, and that he still acts with treacherous cunning; he is the secret enemy that sows errors and misfortunes in human history… who finds his way into us by way of the senses, the imagination, lust, utopian logic, or disorderly social contacts in the give and take of life.6
The Devil’s hooks are many and various. Scriptures teach that when a person desires to do a small evil, the Devil has a claim and can influence him to do something far worse. Conversely, people on a religious path experience the Devil’s temptations precisely at the point where they are about to make great progress.
Belief in the power of the Devil does not imply dualism, although in some religions—Zoroastrianism most notably—God and the Devil are in eternal rivalry. For the monotheistic faiths that teach the goodness of God’s creation, the demons themselves are resultant beings, angels who fell from their original status as God’s servants to become the enemies of God. Father Moon explains that the fall of the angel Lucifer occurred at the Human Fall, at which time he becomes Satan, the powerful demon who asserts dominion over human beings.
Following these are passages describing the Devil’s nature and the various temptations and stratagems he uses to capture human beings. We should be aware that the key to overcoming Satan is to purify ourselves of every characteristic that resembles him—selfishness, arrogance, greed, craving for sensual pleasures—and instead live a life fixed on God and eternity.