Before we consider Job—his personality and his responses—we first need to note some important facts revealed about Satan through this story. In this chapter and the next, we will examine some of these attributes of Satan’s activity.
AN UNEXPECTED TRANSFORMATION
First, the story of Job reveals that Satan can take his place amongst the angels of God. This fact is stated twice, first in Job 1:6 and again in 2:1.
Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came among them. And the Lord said to Satan, “From where do you come?” So Satan answered the Lord and said, “From going to and fro on the earth, and from walking back and forth on it” (Job 1:6-7).
In this context, the sons of God are the angels—they are also mentioned in Job 38:7. This passage also exposes one of the activities in which Satan engages—he goes to and fro in the earth. He walks back and forth on the earth, making all the trouble he can for everybody he encounters. First Peter 5:8 tells us:
Your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.
Then in Job 2:1, the reality of Satan being in the midst of angels is repeated:
There was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan came also among them to present himself before the Lord.
How did Satan manage to include himself with the angels? In Second Corinthians 11:13, where Paul is speaking about false apostles, he writes:
For such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into apostles of Christ.
Paul indicates that there are deceivers—false apostles—who will “transform” themselves into the appearance of true apostles for the intent of deception. This is important to understand because it is still happening today. Also, we are told that Satan himself is able to transform himself into an angel of light (see 2 Cor. 11:14).
From these and other verses, it is my opinion that Satan came among the other angels looking just like them, and very probably the other angels did not recognize him. After all, there are at least a hundred million angels because Revelation tells us there were ten thousand times ten thousand angels around the throne of God (see Rev. 5:11). That calculation gives us the figure of a hundred million.
Among these millions of angels, there was this beautiful, shining figure. It does not seem that the other angels discerned anything different about him. But of course, God certainly knew him, and He said to him: “What are you doing here, Satan? How did you get in among this crowd?”
OUR ACCUSER
I believe that to some extent even today, Satan still has access to God’s presence. Revelation 12:10 says he accuses us—the people of God—before the throne of God day and night. This means that Satan must have some kind of access to God’s throne room.
One of the most important truths we must understand is how to handle Satan’s accusations. Revelation 12:11 gives us the answer:
And they [the believers on earth] overcame him [Satan] by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, and they did not love their lives to the death.
Very simply, these believers testified to what the blood of Jesus does for us. (A more complete study on this topic is the subject of my book Spiritual Warfare in the End Times, available from Derek Prince Ministries.) It takes a certain kind of person to overcome Satan—one who is so committed as not to love his or her life to the death. My definition of this type of person is one for whom doing the will of God is more important than staying alive.
What does that mean for you? It means that if given the choice you will do the will of God and die for it rather than compromise and stay alive. Although I seldom quote him, Lenin, the Communist revolutionary, once said, “Communists are dead men on furlough.” In other words, when a person becomes a member of the Communist party, it is a death sentence for him or her. Death may come in a jail, on a gallows, or at a roadblock. But that person has reconciled himself or herself to the fact that they are going to die.
I believe that, in a certain sense, this should also be true of Christians. Christians are dead men and women on furlough. We have not died yet. But we can anticipate the possibility of a sentence of death that, in the years ahead, may be an increasing possibility if the world order and spiritual climate continue on their present course.
We see then that Satan has some kind of access to the presence of God and that he can disguise himself as an angel of light. The reality is that there have been a number of examples in recent decades of people being deceived by beings who appeared as angels of light but were actually messengers of error.
Having seen the access Satan has as an angel of light, we will examine in the next chapter how God deals with him.