The "location" of Satan is not really divulged to us. We can pretty much presume it to be in the unseen arena, of adverse spirits, whatever and wherever that is. And since these bad actors act up in people, we can presume we're part of their habitation, per Mark 4:15 and other scriptures such as Luke 11:24 showing the unclean spirit considers man "his house." And of course the myriad of scriptures that show us in the Gospels Jesus engaging Satan and devils in people. One of the most obvious showings in the Gospels.
Job 1:7 The Lord said to Satan, “Where have you come from?” Satan answered the Lord, “From roaming throughout the earth, going back and forth on it.”
Jesus was not encountering demons in everyone, so how can you say everyone has a demon in them?
I believe that 1 John 4:7 is true for every person, myself included and that Jesus is the Savior of the world, per the scriptures. I believe He Gets The Job Done too. Most don't. Most think Jesus fails.
John 4:7 Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. 10 This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. 11 Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.
1 John 4:7 Talks about “Godly type Love” which comes with the indwelling Holy Spirit, but as 1 John 4:7-11 points out it is contingent on “if we Love one another”, which is not true of everyone.
Were there a single named example of such a thing I might buy into it, but there's not one single named person given as an example out of potentially multiple BILLIONS of examples. Not even one named person even threatened with such a fate.
Plus the situation is compounded with difficulty because, scripturally, people are not just people. It's people and the tempter working against all of us, from within.
So I believe Jesus could look any of us in the eye, sentence us to our face to hell and it would apply to the TEMPTER. And I would rejoice then to hear those Words knowing unto whom they are directed. Not run from them like most do.
There are tons of warnings in scripture directed at individual people and not some demon living in them. Jesus drove out the demons in those who had a demon around Him and it was not everyone.
Aka Jesus as a failure and people as a failure as well. Not my idea of A Real Savior of the world. Your view makes God held hostage by man's decisions and then, by their failures to save themselves, God is forced into a corner and must burn them alive forever.
People do not “save themselves”! God does not “force” Love/charity/forgiveness/salvation on anyone. This is not a shotgun wedding with God holding the shotgun (which would not be Loving nor would the love received be Godly type Love). Jesus and God did their part perfectly, you just have to accept the charity as charity to complete the transaction.
I just don't believe that's the case for multiple reasons. And I certainly don't believe God burns His Own children alive forever or eternally kills them. To me, that's out there. Demonic.
What is really hard to believe is God’s Love to be so great as to allow His only innocent son to be willingly tortured, humiliated and murdered to save some really guilty unappreciative children deserving of nothing.
I'll give you an example of one problem with so called "freewill." It DEMANDS that God is ruled OUT of mankinds will and it DEMANDS that Satan's will is ruled out as well so the MAN's bad/sinful decisions only rest on the man. And both of those attempts are simply a leap that doesn't exist in scripture. I'd dare call the claim essentially Godless.
I believe scriptures are quite clear that there are actually 3 wills going on with everyone and that neither the Will of God nor the will of Satan can be ruled out of the picture for anyone.
That makes freewill a very muddled claim, at best. It's mostly used to justify believers and condemn blinded captives of the devils, such as with Adam and Eve. I don't need to move that way, trusting in God in Christ for every person, as we should.and we can remain in condemnation of every devil in man simultaneously. It's an actual working Gospel that can be taken into real life daily.
We are talking only about a very limited amount of free will, which God is Loving enough and powerful enough to provide to humans, without negatively affecting others with their free will choice. God and Christ have free will and thus can Love with a free will choice, for us to Love like Christ and God we to must have free will.
The one autonomous free will choice mature adults need to be able to make to complete their earthly objective is to humbly accept or reject God’s help (charity/mercy/grace/Love/forgiveness) as pure charity. In other words: sinful humans can choose to hang in there, be macho, pay the piper and take the punishment they fully deserve or they can wimp out, give up and surrender to their hated enemy, while they still hate their enemy (God) they are just willing to humbly accept their enemy’s undeserved pure charity. They still might feel they deserve from their enemy to be severely tortured to death, for their previous war crimes, yet they are willing to take undeserved charity. They are not being righteous, holy, glorious, honorable, worthy and noble in what they are doing, since it is for selfish reasons, they are willing to accept their enemy’s charity.
God is not forcing his charity on the sinner like some kind of shotgun wedding with God holding the shotgun, since that would not be Loving on God’s part nor would the sinner obtain Godly type Love in that manner. By accepting this Love in the form of forgiveness Jesus has taught us “…he who is forgiven much Loves much…” so humbly accepting pure undeserved forgiveness of an unbelievable huge debt automatically results in the former sinner receiving an unbelievable huge Love (Godly type Love) and thus fulfill the first part of sinners earthly objective.
Verses supporting free will
Gen. 1-3 Did Adam and Eve have free will?
Exodus 35:29 “All the Israelite men and women who were willing brought to the Lord freewill offerings for all the work the Lord through Moses had commanded them to do.” Are these truly free will offerings?
Jonah 3: 10 “When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he relented and did not bring on them the destruction he had threatened.” Did the people of Nineveh change what God said he would do?
How is this not saying that God’s actions are contingent on the choices of the people?
"You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life." (John 5:39-40). Note that Jesus does not say, "you cannot come", which the Greek does not say here, but, "you refuse to come", in order that you may have eternal life. It was their own rejection of Jesus and the Gospel, that would damn their souls, and not because they were "unable" to make the "choice" themselves.
Christ is God here on earth. The “whomsoever” does not mean only the elect, but lots of people, who then made the choice to accept or reject Christ. "You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life." (John 5:39-40)
To say: “Christ only reveals Himself to those who God have chosen to accept Him”, means God is guilty of not helping others to accept Christ.
John 15: 22 If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not be guilty of sin; but now they have no excuse for their sin.
If they have no free will, they have an excellent excuse for sinning?
There are all the “whosoever” verses making it contingent.
Well, at least you manage to get the other party on the table, and that alone makes yours a fuzzy picture of blame to man, knowing full well that sins are not counted against people, 2 Cor. 5:19. IF we really believe that there is only one party left on the table to count sins against and that is the devil and his own.
2 Cor. 5:19 that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. 20 We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God.
Yes God is in the process of reconciling the world to himself, but we are also to be doing that as His ambassadors, making His appeal through us, but it is an “appeal”, meaning something which can be accepted or rejected.
I've never said God excuses any evil. He doesn't. Nor does God forgive sin. God does count sins against the devils.
Nor did the devil make anyone do it. The devil does it. Satan does what Satan does. Sins in people.
There are plenty of places talking about people sinning and it does not say the devil sinned through them, so the people are not sinning.
No matter how much we might try to hang our heads and repent, that never made anyone sinless.
We are undoubtedly commanded to love our neighbors as ourselves and we don't have to concede or accept anything devils do in people, starting with the LOG in our own eye on this matter.
If you are forgiven of the sins you have done, you are a previous sinner.
Yes we are to work on ourselves first and after being forgiven confessing and repenting we can help others.
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