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00:00In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
00:07Not long after, He was forced to create hell,
00:12domain for the fallen angel who dared disobey Him.
00:16The angel was Lucifer, the light bearer,
00:22but he would soon become known by a more sinister name,
00:26Satan, the devil.
00:31He is the nightmare that visits our darkest hours,
00:35the phantom that calls in the middle of the night.
00:39From nearly the dawn of the universe to this very day,
00:43Satan is believed to roam the earth,
00:46vowing to destroy man.
00:49Where there is light, Satan brings darkness.
00:53Where there is peace, he wages war.
00:57Where he finds love, he ushers in hate.
01:01He is said to take on many forms to fool us,
01:05but in his most demonic role,
01:08Satan has been the keeper of the darkness,
01:11the evil that lurks just around the corner
01:15and deep within our souls.
01:19Join us as we tell the terrifying tale
01:23of the evil creature that has haunted humans
01:26since the beginning of time,
01:29Satan, Prince of Darkness.
01:49The story of Satan begins as a tragedy.
01:53At the dawn of time, on the second day of creation,
01:57God surrounded himself with archangels.
02:04Among them was Lucifer, the bearer of light.
02:08Lucifer, the light bearer,
02:14Among them was Lucifer, the bearer of light.
02:21In the beginning, the Satan has the regular terminology
02:25of any angel applied to him.
02:28He's a messenger of God,
02:30and he simply is there to carry out God's will.
02:33So in that sense, he's not a malevolent or evil character.
02:37He's one of the people God relies on.
02:40Then God created man and asked his angels
02:43for something which Lucifer could not give,
02:47that he bowed down to man,
02:49a creature made in the likeness and image of God.
02:56It was a demand that the proud Lucifer refused to obey.
03:01I will not worship an inferior and younger being, Satan said.
03:06I am his senior in the creation.
03:09Before he was made, I was already made.
03:12It is his duty to worship me.
03:17The angels, like human beings, are given a free choice,
03:21either to love God or to love their own will better.
03:24And those angels, namely Satan and his followers,
03:28who chose to love their own will
03:30better than to love the will of God,
03:32those were the demons who were cast out of heaven.
03:39Satan and his followers, the dark angels,
03:42waged a bitter war against God and his archangel Michael.
03:47Michael!
04:06The war in heaven has been
04:08between Michael, the archangel, and his angels,
04:11and a great dragon and his angels.
04:14The great dragon is driven out of heaven,
04:16loses the war, and it says in the book of Revelation
04:19that this great dragon, which the great serpent, was Satan.
04:24Satan and the dark angels were cast into a fiery hell,
04:28where they were to rot for all eternity.
04:32Satan vowed revenge and set out to destroy mankind.
04:36Strangely, Satan did not lose his angelic powers,
04:41which included the ability to change his appearance.
04:46Satan can break the laws of nature and common sense.
04:49He can be a man riding horseback backwards.
04:52He can come upon us in the guise of a seductive, beautiful woman.
04:56He can be a man who has the ability to change his appearance.
05:01He can come upon us in the guise of a seductive, beautiful woman.
05:07He can come in a body that has human parts
05:10and animal parts commingled.
05:12He's powerful.
05:13He's impervious to our abilities to seek him out
05:18in the normal world.
05:19He can be invisible.
05:21He can come as a spirit, as a word in the wind.
05:26Satan went in search of his enemy
05:28and soon appeared on earth, slithering
05:31in the form of a snake.
05:34He entered a garden called Eden, where he sought out
05:37a woman named Eve.
05:44He's very much moved by lust.
05:45He's very attracted to human women.
05:48And they are often his greatest followers,
05:51because he's also a liar.
05:52And women can be evilly deceived,
05:55so say the doctors of the church.
05:57But more than that, he's arrogant.
05:59He doesn't see why angels should be
06:01forced to serve human beings.
06:09God had warned Eve not to eat from the garden's
06:12tree of knowledge.
06:13But Satan lured her to sample the forbidden fruit,
06:17saying that eating it would give her total knowledge
06:20and she would become like God.
06:24He then convinced Eve to share the fruit with Adam.
06:30They represent all of humanity.
06:32And when they choose their own will over the will of God,
06:37they choose to do their own thing rather than God's thing,
06:41then the whole human race tends toward that evil.
06:48As punishment, Adam and Eve, the first man and woman,
06:53were forever banished from paradise.
06:56The devil had struck his first blow against man.
06:59It was sweet revenge.
07:05As man's presence on Earth blossomed,
07:08so did Satan's quest to corrupt him and turn him against God.
07:14Satan began fighting countless battles
07:16with God in an effort to capture human souls.
07:23And though God fought back, he left much of the struggle
07:27to man.
07:36One of the most remarkable stories
07:38quoted in the Bible's Book of Job
07:40tells of Satan tempting God himself
07:43to test the loyalties of man.
07:46He is always distrustful of human motives.
07:48And this is what sets in motion the Book of Job.
07:51God thinks that Job is behaving just wonderfully.
07:55Satan doesn't buy it and says, of course, he's being good.
07:58You've given him everything.
08:00Let's take some things away and see what happens.
08:02This finally is the full-blown Satan as the accuser
08:07and the one who works evil against good people.
08:09God allowed Satan to torment Job,
08:12to afflict him with painful boils,
08:15to destroy his property, and then to kill his children,
08:19all to see if Job would renounce God.
08:26Satan is quoted in the Book of Job saying,
08:29in the end, a man will give all he has to God.
08:33And God will give him all he has to God.
08:36In the end, a man will give all he
08:39has in exchange for his own life.
08:45Job nearly broke under the pressure.
08:48For a moment, he doubted God's love for him.
08:52But he quickly realized his error
08:54and reaffirmed his faith.
08:57According to the Bible, Job lived to be 140 years old.
09:03Satan had failed in his assault upon the faithful Job.
09:07But he was undeterred in his crusade of evil.
09:12He inflicted death and destruction on man
09:14as often as he could.
09:23But Satan was about to meet a person like none other he
09:27had encountered, one who would require his most fervent
09:32attention.
09:44Despite occasional setbacks, as with Job,
09:47Satan held a vice-like demonic grip on the ancient world.
09:52In one form or another, he became a fixture in religions
09:56that desperately searched for ways
09:58to explain the existence of evil.
10:03Ancient people didn't have porch lights,
10:06didn't have street lights.
10:08They were afraid of the darkness because awful things could
10:11happen to you.
10:12Wild animals could eat you.
10:14Demons could come up out of cracks in the earth
10:17and afflict you with all sorts of diseases.
10:21So it was natural for them to think of any uninhabited place
10:24as a dangerous place, hence a place where Satan might pop out
10:28of a cave at you and start bargaining for your soul.
10:33Satan was everywhere, the creator of all earthly misery.
10:38But his role was about to change.
10:44Satan's role on earth, according to the New Testament,
10:47at the beginning was primarily to cause
10:49physical ailments for people.
10:51He causes fever.
10:52He causes infirmities.
10:53People become crippled.
10:55They become lame.
10:56They become insane.
10:57They become epileptic.
11:03A bit later, the emphasis changes
11:05from a physical causation to a moral causation.
11:08He tempts people to sin.
11:13Now, there was a man who walked the earth,
11:16who caught Satan's attention.
11:18This was no ordinary man.
11:21Born of a virgin, he was someone the devil wanted
11:24very much to tempt into sin.
11:27The man's name was Jesus.
11:29The Gospels report that Jesus was a healer in his lifetime.
11:34And most of the healings seem to be affiliated in his mind
11:37and presumably also in the people's minds
11:39with the activities of Satan.
11:41Satan is sending demons into people, making them ill.
11:44The kingdom of Satan leaves when people
11:46are exorcised of the demons causing their illness.
11:49So healing eliminates Satan within the people's lives,
11:52and the kingdom of God is then brought in and made
11:54available by Jesus.
11:59Satan lurked in the shadows and patiently waited
12:02for his opportunity to strike.
12:07His chance came when Jesus went alone into the desert
12:10to fast and pray for 40 days and 40 nights.
12:18It was during this weakened state
12:20that Satan struck, tempting Jesus
12:23with pleasures of the flesh.
12:29Satan came to him, and Satan said,
12:31if you are the Son of God, make these stones into bread.
12:35And Jesus said, no, man does not live by bread alone.
12:39And then Satan took Jesus to the highest point
12:42of the temple in Jerusalem and said to him,
12:45throw yourself off and the angels will catch you,
12:47for it is written that the angels will bear you up.
12:50And Jesus said, no, you shall not tempt the Lord your God.
12:54And then Satan took Jesus to the highest point of the temple
12:57And then Satan took Jesus to the highest mountain
13:00and showed him all the kingdoms and principalities
13:02of the world and said, all this has been given to me.
13:05And if you will fall down and worship me,
13:07then these can be yours.
13:10Jesus said, no, you shall worship only the Lord your God.
13:14And then Satan departed.
13:18Jesus resisted the temptations, but Satan was not finished.
13:23If he could not lead Christ into sin,
13:26then he would find one of his followers, the apostles,
13:30who could be tempted.
13:34But Satan quickly discovered that tempting the apostles
13:37was not easy.
13:39In order to win, he would have to resort
13:41to his ultimate weapon, possession,
13:45the physical act of taking over a person's body.
13:51In the Gospels of John and of Luke,
13:53it says that Judas Iscariot became possessed by Satan.
13:57And after Judas became possessed by Satan,
14:00he immediately went out to betray Jesus.
14:03And this possession took place at the Last Supper.
14:12Judas betrayed Jesus by handing him over to Roman soldiers.
14:1724 hours later, Jesus was executed.
14:24As Jesus slowly died on the cross, Satan was delighted,
14:28not realizing that his scheme had resulted
14:31in one of his greatest defeats.
14:34According to believers, because God allowed his son
14:37to be sacrificed, mankind was saved from sin and Satan.
14:46With Jesus's death on the cross, he liberated, as it were,
14:50humanity from the sins that were holding them
14:53in bondage to these demonic powers.
14:55When Jesus was raised from the dead,
14:58the New Testament authors said that God exalted him
15:01into the highest heavens and placed all thrones, rulers,
15:05powers, and authorities under his feet, which now means
15:09that Satan and demons are under the authority of Christ.
15:17In the centuries that followed, many
15:20believe Satan viciously avenged his loss
15:24by inspiring the Roman Empire to persecute Christians.
15:31Followers of Christ were forced to participate
15:33in bloody spectacles.
15:35They were publicly executed, forced
15:38to battle man-eating lions in front
15:40of thousands of jeering Romans.
15:43Others were burned alive.
15:45Again, the forces of good thwarted Satan's plans.
15:50Instead of being terrorized by the carnage,
15:53early Christians embraced their deaths,
15:55becoming martyrs, effectively taking the venom out
15:59of Satan's bite.
16:02Their goal was to be like Jesus.
16:04And so to die for Jesus would be the highest honor.
16:08And they viewed Satan as this man who
16:11And they viewed Satan as this being that
16:15was trying to stop them from helping
16:17other people come to Christ.
16:19And one of the ways that the early Christians made
16:22the greatest impact on the pagan world
16:25was their willingness to lay down their lives in opposition
16:28to Satan.
16:30Satan couldn't even fight against them by threatening
16:33them with death, that they could overcome that because they knew
16:36that their Lord had also conquered death.
16:42Early Christians fought countless battles
16:44against the agents of sin.
16:46To combat Satan's attacks, they devised another weapon
16:50against the devil, baptism.
16:56In the baptismal formula, there was a place
16:59where the person who is being baptized
17:02formally renounces Satan.
17:05And in some liturgies, they actually
17:07make a right turn and face the east as opposed to the west.
17:12They say, I renounce Satan and all of his works.
17:14And the turning to the east represents
17:16facing the rising sun, the warmth and love of God.
17:24One of the early champions against Satan
17:27was the monk St. Anthony.
17:29Satan's retaliations against him were vicious and inventive.
17:38The most lurid account of Satan's activities
17:41in the early church is the story of the life of St. Anthony.
17:46The devil, seeing that Anthony was doing these good works,
17:50attacked him, first of all, with temptations,
17:53showing him beautiful women and luxurious feasts spread out
17:57before him and so forth.
17:58And when that kind of temptation failed,
18:01actually attacked him physically,
18:04shaking him, throwing him out of his bed, and stamping on him,
18:08and then finally appearing to him
18:11in all kinds of hideous and terrifying shapes and forms
18:14so that Anthony was afraid that he was going insane.
18:21Anthony fought back with prayer.
18:24He became the model of the Christian hero,
18:27the Christian warrior fighting against the powers of Satan.
18:30By the fifth century, perhaps disgusted with Rome's failure
18:34to end Christianity, Satan seemed to have enough.
18:38He brought the empire to its knees.
18:41Rome was overrun by barbarians.
18:44Anarchy ruled.
18:51The fall of Rome was significant in the development of ideas
18:55about Satan.
18:56Because it represented the collapse of the moral and civic
19:00order as people knew it in the fifth century.
19:04When everything began to collapse around them,
19:06they began to sense that the powers of evil
19:09were stronger than they had previously thought.
19:14But Satan's quest to conquer man was just beginning.
19:27For nearly 1,000 years following the fall of Rome,
19:31the hand of Satan could be found in catastrophic events.
19:38The Crusades are starting up.
19:40People are dealing with the aftermath
19:42of the incredible carnage of the Black Plague.
19:45Wars of religion, wars against heretics,
19:49persecutions of Jews, lepers, homosexuals
19:52are all taking place at this time.
19:54How is the church to explain the fact
19:55that everything seems to be going to hell in a hand car?
19:59The church goes with a conspiracy theory.
20:01The devil must be behind all of this.
20:07But as society struggled against Satan's evil,
20:11there were always new opportunities for corruption.
20:14What could not be attacked from the outside
20:17would be rotted from within.
20:24People began making pacts with the devil,
20:27deals they hoped would gain them wealth or power
20:31in exchange for their souls.
20:37One of the things that shows up in all kinds of folklore
20:41about Satan, the king of the demons,
20:44is that he makes deals with human beings.
20:47And we are advised when making deals
20:50that we should be careful not to get caught up in it.
20:53We are advised when making a deal with the devil
20:56to read the fine print, because Satan is a liar.
21:00He'll find a way to trick you so that even though you think
21:02you're getting your heart's desire,
21:04you'll find out you wind up in hell just the same.
21:10One of the most famous pacts with Satan
21:12was that described in 1604 by dramatist Christopher Marlowe
21:17in his play Dr. Faustus.
21:23Faustus thirsted for universal knowledge.
21:26In return, he renounced Christ and offered his soul
21:30to the devil.
21:34But when the devil came to claim his prize,
21:37even though Faustus was terrified of being damned,
21:41he was too proud to beg forgiveness from God.
21:45The stars move still.
21:48Time runs.
21:49The clock will strike.
21:51The devil will come, and Faustus will be damned.
21:56Dr. Faustus, 1604.
22:02When Faustus died, Satan escorted his soul to hell.
22:10You make an agreement with the devil
22:12any time you say no to God and yes to Satan or Satan's values.
22:17The cardinal elements of this system
22:20are the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes,
22:22and the pride of life.
22:24And whenever any human being buys into those values
22:28and begins to live for fleshly pleasures or worldly pleasures
22:33or pride or power or glory or money, in effect,
22:38you're making a pact with the devil
22:40because you're saying those values are more important
22:43than doing the will of God.
22:47Perhaps the best known description of Satan
22:49and his hellish home is the one given by the poet Dante
22:54in that section of the divine comedy called The Inferno.
23:02Dante has perhaps the most dramatic and frightening
23:06picture of Satan.
23:08Satan is a huge monster the size of a windmill.
23:14And he has these enormous black wings
23:16that stick out to the side.
23:18And he fans them.
23:24Their sighs, lamentations, and loud wailings
23:29resounded through the starless air
23:32so that at first it made me weep.
23:36Strange tongues, horrible language, worlds of pain,
23:40tones of anger, voices loud and hoarse.
23:44And with these, the sounds of hands
23:47made a tumult which is whirling through that air forever
23:50as sand eddies in a whirlwind.
23:54Dante's Inferno.
24:00Reports of Satan's pacts with humans
24:03became most prevalent between the years 1450
24:06and the early 1700s.
24:09And the incredible power he gave to individuals
24:12who claimed to work on his behalf
24:14was given a name, witchcraft.
24:19Accusations were made against hundreds of thousands,
24:22perhaps even as many as a million people,
24:24that they were formal worshipers of Satan.
24:27That they met together in groups called conventicles or sabbats.
24:32And that they formally worshipped Satan.
24:34And that sometimes he appeared to them.
24:35And that they had sex with him.
24:38And that they sacrificed babies to him and so forth.
24:43Satan was said to have assisted witches
24:45in destroying crops and property of their enemies.
24:49He brought sickness and death to animals and people.
25:00Although men called warlocks were accused
25:02of trafficking with Satan, the vast majority
25:06of those under suspicion were older women
25:08with little connection to society.
25:11Many were midwives who practiced folk medicine.
25:15Their beliefs made them easy targets.
25:20We need to remember that most of the witch hunters
25:23were celibate monks.
25:26Were persons who feared women.
25:29Who had been taught no good about women.
25:31Who seemed to have the Bible backing them up on the view
25:35that women were the source of sin.
25:38If women's sexuality is the source of sin,
25:41and that's also associated with Satan,
25:43it was natural to think that when things went wrong
25:46in the community, it was because women and Satan had once again
25:50collaborated to make it so.
25:55More than 100,000 men and women accused of witchcraft
25:59were killed in Europe.
26:02Many women who confessed to being
26:04in collusion with the devil did so simply
26:07to stop the torture they endured at the hands
26:10of their inquisitors.
26:13Most of the people accused were pretty clearly
26:16innocent of the crime.
26:18Why did they confess?
26:19The person is brought into the examination room.
26:22The inquisitor is sitting there with a list of questions.
26:24Have you ever had sexual relations with the devil?
26:27Have you ever sacrificed a human child to the devil?
26:30Have you ever knelt down and worshipped the devil?
26:33When the person says no, then you show them
26:37instruments of torture.
26:38And you say, well, now, if you keep on denying this,
26:42we're going to use these.
26:43And of course, then if the person keeps on denying,
26:46then they do use them.
26:47So under torture, the person eventually, most of them,
26:52would confess.
26:53Every time a person confessed under torture,
26:55that was added to the statistics.
26:57The inquisitors who said, well, here's
27:00yet another one who confessed to eating children
27:02at the witch's sabbath.
27:07Satan secured perhaps his greatest success
27:10in the New World when in 1692, witch hysteria swept
27:15through a coastal Massachusetts town called Salem.
27:23The Puritans of Salem had become obsessed with sin and Satan.
27:28The devil was always one step behind,
27:31waiting to strike the moment a person stumbled.
27:36There's no document in the Puritan culture
27:41from which Satan is absent.
27:42There's no sermon.
27:43There's no work of political theory.
27:46There's not even a poem or a story in the 17th century
27:50from which Satan is absent.
27:52He's everywhere, within us and outside us at the same time.
27:56A group of young girls in Salem had
27:58accused several older women of trying to bewitch them
28:01to do Satan's work.
28:06Although the women denied any allegiance with Satan,
28:10the charges led to the conviction and deaths
28:13of 19 of those accused.
28:26The hysteria ended only when charges of witchcraft
28:29were made against the wife of the governor of the colony.
28:34A woman of her status, the embarrassed colonist thought,
28:37was beyond the reach of the devil.
28:42Nevertheless, the fear of Satan had won.
28:47Even if the witches of Salem had not really
28:50made deals with the devil, the people of the town
28:53were willing to believe they had.
28:56Human fear and ignorance had done the rest.
29:02All in all, it was a triumph for the power of Satan,
29:06but one the devil would not be able to savor for long.
29:17The seeds of distrust, sown by Satanic belief at Salem,
29:20would not take root.
29:23A backlash set in as people realized they, not Satan,
29:27may have been responsible for what had happened.
29:33They had accepted faulty evidence.
29:36They had been gullible.
29:37They had become convinced that the devil was present when it
29:41turned out maybe he wasn't, or maybe he was, in fact,
29:45infecting their minds, seducing them, misleading them.
29:49And so the rules of evidence became tighter.
29:52People became more suspicious of claims
29:55that the devil has come to us from the invisible world.
30:01In a curious twist of events, Satan
30:04was taken up as a hero by writers
30:06of the 18th and 19th centuries, who
30:09saw him as an admirable rebel against authority.
30:15Prince of exile, wrote the poet Baudelaire,
30:18you have been wronged.
30:20Defeated, you rise up even stronger.
30:28Instead of being the paragon of supernatural evil,
30:32Satan was a figure against which mere men measured themselves,
30:36a bitter blow to the angel who had
30:38fallen due to the sin of pride.
30:43One reason I think that Satan's reputation ran into trouble
30:46in the course of the 18th century
30:48is that a culture in which an overweening sense of self,
30:52or too much concern with the self,
30:54had once been clearly a sin, a sign of excess pride,
31:00was now becoming something of a virtue.
31:09Satan's reputation was further battered
31:11as the age of science developed.
31:14Increasingly, storms, plagues, and other terrors
31:18could be explained as natural, manageable phenomena,
31:22rather than as the cursed malefactions of Satan.
31:26Mystery was unceremoniously wrenched from the universe.
31:32Either you accept the scientific worldview
31:36and deny the existence of the devil,
31:38or you deny the scientific worldview, in which case
31:41you certainly may continue to believe in the devil.
31:44As science grew, our powerful belief in the devil
31:47became less widespread.
31:52The same people whom he had terrorized
31:54from the beginning of time no longer
31:57allowed the fear of evil to dominate their lives.
32:00They demanded proof that Satan even existed.
32:07And even worse, he became to some the object of ridicule.
32:18Once seen as a fierce monster who could devastate nations
32:21with one fiery sweep of his hand,
32:24Satan was now depicted as a clown.
32:31He became a favorite whipping boy of cartoonists.
32:34Often seen as a buffoon who thought too much about himself,
32:38his great deeds of evil were diminished
32:42to mischief and pranks.
32:45On Halloween and other occasions,
32:48people mocked him with comic costumes.
32:54The devil's garb was even donned by a celebrated Civil War
32:57general.
33:00General Custer showed up at a masquerade ball in 1865
33:05dressed as the devil in what amounted to a red leotard.
33:11The idea of turning Satan into a comic figure,
33:16using him as a costume for a Halloween ball,
33:20is something that would never have occurred in the 17th
33:22or in the early 18th century when
33:24the devil was taken with the utmost seriousness.
33:27And in fact, anyone making a mockery of the idea
33:30by lampooning him would have been instantly suspected
33:34of having been one of his servants.
33:42In fact, ridicule turned out to be a potent weapon
33:46and protection against him.
33:54The folklore also tells us that there is one sure way
33:58to get rid of Satan, and that is to laugh at him, to mock him,
34:02to say, you're not so big.
34:05Satan was defanged, not by the God who had banished him
34:09from heaven at the beginning of time,
34:12but by the devil's most hated enemy, man, the creature who
34:17was responsible for his misery.
34:22But could Satan's apparent fall from power
34:26be yet another one of his tricks?
34:34The 20th century would provide vast new opportunities
34:38for the resurgence of belief in Satan.
34:41The stability, which had characterized
34:43much of the 19th century in much of the world,
34:46began to collapse.
34:53Times filled with war and the unleashing
34:55of brutal new doctrines were seen by many
34:58as signs that Satan's power was again on the rise.
35:05Thinkers of the previous two centuries
35:07had attempted to explain away the invisible powers
35:10of good and evil, but their words could not
35:13stop wars and man's cruelty.
35:22Even in times of peace, Satan now seemed to flourish.
35:28After two centuries of impotence,
35:31Satan's stock was on the rise.
35:34A weird thing happens in the life of the devil
35:37in the mid-20th century and late 20th century
35:40in that after having been in decline for 100 years or even
35:45more, the devil begins to make a comeback, not so much
35:49in theology, because there aren't a whole lot
35:52of Christian theologians or preachers who
35:54want to spend much time talking about the devil,
35:57but in some ways, in some ways, in some ways,
36:00they're not talking about the devil,
36:01but instead, curiously, in popular culture,
36:05in literature, in the movies.
36:12In the 1970s, inspired by an actual incident,
36:16the novel and then the motion picture, The Exorcist,
36:19reported what seemed to be renewed assaults by Satan,
36:23using the tactic of demonic possession.
36:30You are no experts.
36:32You probably know as much about possession as most priests.
36:36Look, your daughter doesn't say she's a demon.
36:38She says she's the devil himself.
36:41Show me that!
36:43No!
36:44No!
36:45No!
36:46No!
36:47No!
36:48No!
36:49No!
36:50No!
36:51No!
36:53The one hope, the only hope, The Exorcist.
37:00The movie is such as The Exorcist, for example,
37:03in which the power of the devil is shown to be enormous.
37:06He completely possesses, takes over this child,
37:10and the child is rescued only by the priest exercising here,
37:13and then the devil enters into the priest
37:15and throws him out the window and kills him.
37:18And there have been, since that time,
37:20since the time of The Exorcist, there
37:21have been dozens, scores of movies based on this.
37:26Dozens, scores of movies based upon these ideas, which then
37:32seem to have taken a kind of a popular life of their own,
37:36so that there are well-documented satanic cults
37:39today.
37:41Right now, there are people who are practicing Satanism,
37:45having borrowed their ideas, I think,
37:46largely from the media.
37:49Lucifer excelsis Dei, in the name of our most exalted God,
37:55Satan, Lucifer, I command thee to come forth and bestow
38:01these blessings of hell upon us.
38:04Come forth by these names.
38:09Once shrouded in darkness and secrecy,
38:12cults devoted to Satan emerged into unashamed public view.
38:17Satan, it was now revealed, was revered by many, again,
38:22in some cases, as a symbol of resistance to authority.
38:46In other cases, Satan's worshipers
38:49believe the devil grants them extraordinary earthly powers.
38:58Biographers of Satan wonder how his story will end.
39:02The Bible, in the book of Revelation,
39:04says there will be one final struggle, one last battle
39:08between God and the dark angels.
39:11The forces of good will be led by Christ, who will return
39:15to Earth in his second coming.
39:18Jesus and the archangels will eventually be victorious,
39:21the Bible says, and Satan will be destroyed.
39:28From that time onward, the world will finally
39:31be as God had intended, a world of peace and love.
39:40A good and loving place.
39:45In the meantime, however, judging by his past record,
39:48Satan will remain active, if, in fact, he really exists.
39:54But many argue he is nothing more than a myth,
39:56a human invention, the ultimate scapegoat and excuse.
40:05When the televangelist Jimmy Swaggart was caught, as it were,
40:09with his pants down, and he appeared on television,
40:13and he asked forgiveness of God, and he
40:15said he had been seduced by the devil
40:17and had fallen into sinfulness, a great portion
40:20of the American people thought that what they were seeing
40:23was a hypocrite, an imposter, who had finally
40:27been exposed for what he was.
40:29But another portion of the American people
40:31thought that they had seen a man of true faith
40:34and true conviction, who had the courage
40:36to ask forgiveness of God before his flock.
40:40Those two groups of Americans seem
40:41to have less and less to say to one another,
40:44because for one of them, the story of the devil
40:47in the Garden of Eden and the war
40:49in the invisible world between God and Satan
40:52remains real and vital and vibrant.
40:55And for the others, it has become an interesting myth.
41:01One of the problems we see when we're thinking about where
41:05the devil comes from and what role he fills in human thinking
41:09is the fact that we are very unwilling to own up
41:12to our own mistakes.
41:14When evil happens, especially evil
41:16we can't explain, like an epidemic or an earthquake,
41:20it's much more comforting to assign that evil
41:23to the boogeyman, rather than saying,
41:26we don't know what happened, or perhaps it was our fault.
41:32The Russian novelist Dostoevsky suggested,
41:35if the devil doesn't exist, but man has created him,
41:40he has created him in his own image and likeness.
41:46Others suggest Satan ought to be taken very seriously.
41:50Denying his existence, they warn,
41:53will leave us vulnerable to his unremitting assaults.
41:57The capacity for cruelty and for inflicting suffering
42:02remains in the world as anyone who
42:04turns on the evening news on any day of the week
42:07hardly needs to be reminded.
42:09So if we choose to turn away from our own religious
42:13traditions in thinking about these capacities,
42:16we had better have some new and effective way of thinking
42:21about these realities.
42:26If we can't name something, if we can't understand it,
42:30it's likely to take us by surprise.
42:40So in a final irony, Satan may be serving humanity
42:45by standing as a warning that any of us at any time
42:49may be tempted into evil.
42:56I'm going to go to bed.
42:57Good night.
42:58Good night.