The Power of Satan: Supernatural or Paranormal? - Glenn Conjurske

The Power of Satan: Supernatural or Paranormal?

by Glenn Conjurske

My readers may wonder what has become of me, when they see such an advocate of plain and common English using such a word as “paranormal,” but the word is not mine. In taking up the July issue of Dave Hunt’s Berean Call, I find the following: “However, we both [Dave Hunt and André Kole, a Campus Crusade magician] agree that Satan’s power is not supernatural, but that only God can do true miracles, which override the laws governing the universe. Nevertheless, in my opinion, Satan has paranormal power that cannot be explained by science or duplicated by stage magicians. When Satan, as a spirit being (who is subject to God’s laws governing the spirit world), invades our physical dimension, he is able seemingly to defy physical laws to which we are subject.”

Kole apparently holds that all the miracles performed by various sorts of spiritualists are mere sleight of hand, and claims that he can duplicate any of them. Hunt denies this, attributing to Satan a “paranormal” power, which yet is not supernatural. But if this “paranormal” power is not supernatural, then it is only sleight of hand on a larger scale. When the magicians of Egypt cast down their rods, they became serpents. No doubt any magician could do this by sleight of hand, merely substituting a serpent for a rod. If this is what Satan did, it was merely sleight of hand on a larger scale. He did not pull the serpents from the hats or sleeves of the magicians, but carried them in the twinkling of an eye from some other place, and whisked away the rods likewise. Such the devil doubtless could do, yet the Bible says, in Exodus 7:12, “For they cast down every man his rod, and they became serpents.” “They,” their rods, “became” serpents. If this miracle was only “seeming,” then is the language of Scripture only “seeming” also? The scripture says the rods “became” serpents. If we may interpret this language as only popular and seeming, we have in fact so far become modernists, reading the language of Scripture with a mental reserve, and have no very solid basis for any belief in miracles at all. On the very same principle by which we here prove that the devil only seemed to do a miracle, another man may prove that Christ only seemed to do his miracles. The rods became serpents, seemingly, and the water became wine, seemingly. I do not of course impute such thinking to Mr. Hunt. I only affirm that the same argument which proves the one equally proves the other.

The fact is, the Bible everywhere uses the same language of Satanic or demonic miracles as it uses for divine. The false Christs and false prophets “show great signs and wonders.” (Matt. 24:24). The antichrist comes with “all power and signs and lying wonders.” (II Thes. 2:9). Here “power” is plural, and is the same term—-dunamiV—-which is used everywhere else for miracles. It is perfectly legitimate to translate this “all miracles and signs and wonders,” and all three of these terms are used to designate the miraculous. Must we read the passage with mental reserve, “all seeming miracles and signs and wonders”?

The beast in Revelation 13 (verses 13 & 14) “doeth great wonders, so that he maketh fire come down from heaven on the earth in the sight of men, and deceiveth them that dwell on the earth by the means of those miracles which he had power to do.” Are these only seeming miracles?

In contrasting the strength of Samson with that of the demon-possessed man, Hunt says, “In contrast to Samson’s supernatural strength through the Holy Spirit (Jgs 13-16), this was paranormal strength due to ‘an unclean spirit’ (Mk. 5:2).” This is a distinction without a difference. So far as I can tell, “paranormal” is only an uncommon word for the common “supernatural.” The source of the power, whether of the Holy Spirit or an unclean spirit, is irrelevant if the nature of the power is the same.

Perhaps Mr. Hunt is defining “supernatural” in too high a sense, and “miracle” in too narrow a sense. If “supernatural” must mean divine, to the exclusion of angelic, and if a “miracle” must be an act of divine power, then of course the devil is incapable of it, but if the devil does by his own spiritual power the same things that God or angels do by their power, why are they not miracles? When Elijah called down fire from heaven, this was a miracle. When the beast calls down fire from heaven, and the Bible calls it a miracle, why are we to believe that this is only a seeming miracle—-merely transporting the fire from elsewhere, or bringing together such elements as would cause spontaneous combustion? And even if the devil can do only the latter, why is not this a miracle? Does Mr. Hunt know certainly that the beast’s miracle differs in essence from that of Elijah? I have indeed long supposed that many at least of the divine miracles merely make use of the laws of nature, by divine or angelic power, which is beyond human ability. Scripture affirms this, in some cases. “And Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and the Lord caused the sea to go back by a strong east wind all that night, and made the sea dry land, and the waters were divided.” (Ex. 14:21). All but the modernists hold this to be a miracle, and if the devil can thus use the same powers of nature, why is that not a miracle?

We know certainly that the devil can overcome the force of gravity—-perhaps merely by lifting things, as every one of us can do in our own limited way. The devil certainly overcame the laws of gravity when he lifted the physical body of Christ to the pinnacle of the temple. Could he not then also, by an exercise of the very same power, cause a man to walk on the water? And if so, wherein would this differ from the Lord’s doing so? Was it not a miracle when Christ walked on the water, and enabled Peter to do so? Certainly the devil could cause the iron to swim, by the same power by which he took Christ up to the pinnacle of the temple. Was it then no miracle when Elisha caused the iron to swim? We fear that any attempt to deprive the devil of miraculous power will in the end work against the miracles of Christ, and of the prophets and apostles also, though this is far from Mr. Hunt’s intent. He grants that the devil can remove what he can inflict (as Job’s boils). When Christ then healed the woman “whom Satan hath bound, lo, these eighteen years,” was this no miracle? Hunt grants the devil could have done it.

We confess that we do not know so much about the devil’s power as Mr. Hunt does. That he does not have all the power which God has we know. What his limitations are we know not. We object to Mr. Hunt’s doctrine on this subject for two reasons. It seems to open the door to the weakening of the testimony of Scripture, and it is wise above what is written.

Glenn Conjurske