Satan cannot infest Creation.
Yet again, it is impossible to declare principles. We are discussing moral truth, which transcends mere words. It’s not that evil magic cannot afflict you in this world, but that you must first believe it before the Devil can do that. We are the stewards of Earth. Our divine authority doesn’t extend past the orbit of the Moon, but we were made to manage things according to the power that created all things. In our fallen state, that power is hidden from us. We have no idea how to exercise it, mostly because it is a moral issue of the heart, not something our intellects can grasp.
Satan is constrained by Biblical Law. The essence of Biblical Law is the character of the Lord Jesus Christ. You can grasp it only from the heart, as knowing a Person, not simply data and ideas in your head. Ultimate Reality is a matter of knowing Creation is a living being, infused with the life force of the Creator. All of it is made according to His moral character, so it should make sense that if you aren’t acquainted with God, you cannot possibly understand reality. Satan is not God’s enemy, but he is ours. He’s not fighting God, but it’s his job to maintain dominance over any of us who fail to embrace divine revelation.
Further, he came into his position as God’s Punisher as punishment for his own failures. That wasn’t his original role in the Heavenly Courts. As part of that punishment, he is confined to this world and under the constraints of divine justice. A part of that justice is that we remain titular stewards of this fallen world. But we cannot unlock the mystery of how to manage things here as long as we remain under Satan’s dominion. Instead, he is permitted to make some limited use of those powers we can’t touch, but which belong to us. Hint: Ours is the power of love and communion with Creation; his is the power of enslavement. That power is by its nature highly limited.
Here we need to remind ourselves that reality is alive, and treats no two of us exactly alike. Thus, some people in this world have experienced things that are inexplicable, and may even be without any objective evidence. That’s because the notion of a unified and consistent reality, as commonly held by Western minds, is utterly false. Reality isn’t like that. It is not inert and passive, but active and alive. It’s not that some serious afflictions are psychosomatic; everything that we experience is psychosomatic. Believing the Devil’s lies can have very real consequences in the sense that it can kill us. Reality will respect our choices.
It is not that you should imagine reality as chaotic, but that reality is personal. In my experience, it’s as though reality is the mother of us all. Like any other person, reality remains who she is, and we all have some common experiences of her. But that personal element means we don’t experience her exactly the same way, in part because no two of us is exactly alike. The idea of “fairness” is a devilish lie, because you can’t treat everyone the same when they aren’t the same. There is a certain kind of equality in her love, but because of our individual uniqueness, there is no equality in effects. We each receive what she deems appropriate for our best interest.
We all have certain claims on her heart, and vice versa. But if we treat her with contempt and deny she is alive, we prevent her doing very much for us. She will give us what we demand in some measure. If we start making demands consistent with the Devil’s lies, things don’t work out well. Satan can seize on our portion of the divine birthright, and that includes a certain amount of power, the amount consistent with our divine stewardship. This is a stewardship where God is an Eastern feudal potentate who would normally grant certain royal duties to His heirs; you really need to see it in those terms. If reality is the mother, then He is the Father. A viewpoint of European Medieval feudalism is all wrong; it has to be Ancient Near Eastern feudalism.
Satan is stuck here on this earth as one of God’s more powerful feudal nobles. God’s divine law for Earth restricts him. He does not cross those boundaries. Everything he gains comes from us, and it’s because we surrender voluntarily. If we believe his lies, then reality doesn’t appear to treat us very well. He thus has the power to accomplish all kinds of things, but he cannot legally own any of this world. He’s in jail here with us, and we are the management of the jail. He has only so much power as we grant him, via believing his lies.
There are no places on this earth particularly accursed. They might appear to be accursed for some portion of the human population that believes his lies, but that’s not really how it works. Instead, there are places specially blessed on this earth, designed by God to heal and bring peace with Him. But if we don’t understand how any of that works, they can appear to be accursed. The same is true with various objects. They may appear accursed to some, but there’s nothing inherent in the object that threatens someone who walks in faith. Satan cannot own anything on this planet. He can only seduce us into agreeing with him and letting him control things in our lives, and in the lives of those who should fall under our dominion.
God has granted to each of us a certain domain. It’s as if we hold titles by birthright. We can waste those resources and impoverish that domain, or we can turn to Him for guidance and prosper it. And if we are faithful, He often extends the grant to a larger domain. But the initial birthright remains for each of us. We have the duty to call on Him and discover what that birthright is, and to embrace the duty of serving His glory by how we manage it. This frame of reference is how we understand blessings and curses, and what appears to be miracles and evil magic. What strikes us as dark arts of evil magic are a matter of letting the Devil plunder our miracles.
There is no explaining how some awful people in this world are granted substantial domains of power. That’s the private counsel of God, and only a few of His faithful prophets are permitted any level of insight, which isn’t really that much. He may answer queries and He may not; we are in no position to question anything God does. Still, some humans are permitted to accomplish some really magnificent evil and we have to deal with it. Whatever it is they gain in this world means nothing, except as it symbolizes for us how this business of power and dominion works. The Bible does explain it in broad general terms, but you have to read it from the heart to get the picture.
Evil is just as real as good. Blessings and miracles are as real as curses and tragedies. But you cannot handle such issues along the lines of “objective truth.” There’s no such thing. Reality is a person, and all of Creation is alive, sentient and willful. It will cooperate with the Devil only so far as we demand it by believing His lies. A particular object or location on this earth is accursed only in the sense it is for those who believe it. The effects of that belief are as real as anything else, but it doesn’t affect all of us the same because some of us have rejected Satan’s lies.
Don’t believe and don’t fear.
