E J Kemper III

Know Thy Enemy E J Kemper III

One of my favorite movies of all time is the 1995 crime thriller The Usual Suspects. In this movie, Kevin Spacey plays a small-time con man named Verbal Kint. Because he is one of only two survivors of a horrific fire, Verbal is brought in by detectives to be interrogated. Amidst his convoluted story about a mysterious crime boss named Keyser Söze, Mr. Kint says, "...the greatest trick the devil ever played was convincing the world that he didn't exist..." The origin of this phrase is a short prose poem by Charles Pierre Baudelaire, found in his book Paris Spleen published in 1869, in which he writes, "The devil's best trick is to persuade you that he doesn't exist." Truer words are rarely spoken. For this indeed is the greatest trick the devil is playing on many people today. Many believe the devil to be a superstitious figment of the hyper-Christian mind. Some believe him to be an idea that metaphorically represents all that is wrong with the world. Some see him as a fictitious cartoon with a pitchfork, pointy tail and a goatee. Some more absurdly think of a little red man with horns coming out of his head when they think of the devil. Sadly, many who profess Christ as Savior do not believe in a literal devil. According to statistics done by the Barna Research Group and published in the New York Times, "...less than one in three American Christians believe in a living being called the devil..." Those are staggering numbers considering the Bible's fundamental assertion that the devil is a literal being opposed to God. No matter the statistical trends, the devil remains a reality and the ultimate, undiminished embodiment of evil. The devil is a real person. He is not someone to be taken lightly. He is the relentless enemy of all God's people. The Bible reveals that the enemy's greatest weapon is ignorance of God's Word. From the onset of his encounter with men, he has tried to dupe men by twisting and distorting the very words of God. From the Garden of Eden to the temptation of Christ to this very moment, the enemy has attempted to use man's ignorance of God's word to his advantage. To Eve he said, "has God said..." To Christ he said, "it is written..." This attack of the enemy reveals our true source of power: God's Word!! It was Eve's ignorance of God's word that caused her to be tricked by the devil and it was Christ's knowledge of God's word that caused Him to prevail over the devil. (more on that later.) With this in view, we will discover what the Bible teaches us about this relentless enemy. To achieve this, we will examine the three most common names used for him in Holy Scripture; Lucifer, Satan and the Devil. Each of these names reveals an aspect or character of the enemy that every believer should know. We will then determine our response to these attributes. To be clear, there are some twenty-eight different names and titles given to the devil in the Bible. Among these are serpent, man of sin, prince of darkness and father of lies. But I have chosen the most common and well-known names of the enemy for the purposes of this study. These three names are not only the most familiar but they are also the names that give us the most insight into who the Bible reveals our enemy to be.