Nothing of Hell Doth Satan Know...

In his mainly very informative and useful book, The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis, in a number of places, has senior devil Screwtape refer to Satan as "our Father".  That is an error.  Satan is many things, including the "prince of the power of the air", the "adversary", "that old dragon", the "ruler of this present world", and so on, but the only thing that he is described as being the father of in God's Word is lies!


Nothing of hell doth Satan know
Save what is written, my friend.
He only knows what God has revealed
Of his fate at the time of the end.
Yes, Satan still roams the face of this earth
As a lion in search of a prey,
But his time's getting short, his actions more desperate,
As the seconds keep ticking away.
Though he has great power to deceive and disrupt,
Omnipotent he's certainly not,
For he's only a creature, once the most beautiful,
And God gave him the power he's got.
He's not omnipresent, as some people believe —
He can't be, all the time, everywhere;
Though perhaps he can travel with a speed close to light,
He can't bear to stand in its glare.
Only God knows all from beginning to end;
Only God is everywhere all the time.
Satan, the creature, is a wandering spirit;
To what's yet to come he is blind.
He studies the scriptures, knows them full well,
And his demons study them, too,
Fearing and trembling at what they read there
As they wonder what God's going to do.
Satan's not master of that place that's called hell;
That's just another one of his lies:
Hell's something he fears above everything else
For it signals his certain demise.
Hell doesn't exist yet but it's being prepared;
No demons dance there with glee;
It's a place that they fear above everything else,
A torment from which they would flee,
But flee it they can't, as they fully well know,
For they've taken the time to look
At their Judgment that's written and the Sentence pronounced
On the pages of God's wonderful Book.

a. franklin staples


Copyright © 1996 by A. Franklin Staples