It is refreshing and fascinating to turn from these classical caricatures to the scriptural conception of Satan. It is always bad to have the truth hid from our eyes. To revolt from the true, hidden by a caricature, in revolting from the caricature is easy, but is certainly bad.
Yet where there is a caricature there must be a true. In our day when every foundation of knowledge is being examined there has been a natural but unthinking turning away from the very being of Satan through these representations of him. A caricature so disproportions and exaggerates as to make hideous or ridiculous. They are grotesque to an extreme, and therefore caricatures. These suggestions of horns and hoofs, of forked tail and all the rest of it seek to give material form to this being. He is willing even to be caricatured, or to be left out of reckoning, if so he may tighten his grip. One familiar with Satan's characteristics can easily imagine his cunning finger in that. Almost universally they have been taken literally whether so meant or not.
The conceptions of Satan and his hosts and surroundings made classical by such as Dante and Milton and Dore have done much to befog the air. Our generation has pretty much left this individual Satan out. The real pitch of prayer therefore is Satanward. He has not the power to hold it back finally, if some one understands and prays with quiet, steady persistence. The intense fact is this: Satan has the power to hold the answer back - for awhile to delay the result - for a time.
For if there were clear understanding here, and then faithful practicing, there would be mightier defeats and victories: defeats for the foe victories for our rightful prince, Jesus. One marvels that so little is said of it. Yet though strange it contains the whole heart of the question. A very strange phase of prayer must be considered here. What has been said is simply clearing the way for what is yet to be said. It is a most important word indeed the climactic word. (Samuel Dickey) GordonThere remains yet a word to be said about hindrances.
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