Continued from last week
Therefore, it is really Satan’s nature that is being labeled as human nature. In fact, once injected into people, the devil’s nature becomes natural to them. It becomes their nature—now human nature!
It is critical to realize how this spirit works in people. It is the single greatest key to understanding exactly how Satan can deceive and manipulate almost six and one-half billion people.
Human Nature
Although we now understand that human nature comes from Satan, we must also understand that it is not inherited—but rather acquired! A parent who loses an eye, hand or leg does not produce children having only one eye, one hand or one leg. When God used one of Adam’s ribs to create Eve, it did not mean that all men ever after would lack one rib. Also, the Bible refers to their son Abel as “righteous Abel.” Their disobedience did not prevent his obedience.
Adam and Eve were adult “babies.” Just like babies born today, they were pure at the time of their creation (“birth”) but were quickly exposed to a “broadcast” they were not able to resist. They were created on the sixth day of the week (Friday), rested on the Sabbath (Saturday), and were seduced by Satan (Gen. 3:1-6) probably the next day (Sunday)—at the age of two days old! Thus, Satan was waiting for “baby” Adam and “baby” Eve. No two-day-old child can discern right from wrong. Like so many young people, Adam and Eve just thought they were grown-up enough to make their own decisions.
Think of it this way. Again, like most children today, Adam and Eve chose not to listen to their Parent, God. Instead, they believed Satan’s lie that they would not “surely die.” Once again, in so doing, they rejected the rule of the government of God in their lives. If Adam had obeyed God’s instruction, he would have qualified to replace Satan and restore the government of God on earth.
Notice this New Testament evidence of how human nature is acquired, not inherited: “But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtlety, so your minds should be corrupted…” (II Cor. 11:2-3).
Paul was writing to people who lived 4,000 years after Adam and Eve. He recognized that the devil was still alive and active. The Corinthians were adults capable of being deceived (“beguiled”) in the same way as Eve, and Paul warned them to be on guard that they not return to following the ways of human nature. Just as Eve’s nature was not evil and hostile to God (see Romans 8:7) before she was deceived, neither was the nature of the Corinthians after they were converted.
Once called and converted, having received the Spirit of God, one has put off the old human nature of his past life. Paul also added in Ephesians 2:3, “Among whom also we all had our conversation [conduct] in times past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind; and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others.” These statements follow, and are actually part of, the passage identifying Satan as the “prince of the power of the air.”
Think for a moment. It would be grossly unfair of God to inject newborn babies with human nature and place them under His “wrath.” Do you see this point? Human nature is acquired—and this puts people under the wrath of God!
The following is the same scripture from the Phillips translation of the New Testament (1962 edition). It better describes how all people have acquired human nature from Satan—and the influence driving all modern social practices. The parenthetical portion is part of this translation: “You drifted along on the stream of this world’s ideas of living, and obeyed its unseen ruler [Satan] (who is still operating in those who do not respond to the truth of God)…We all lived like that in the past, and followed the impulses and imaginations of our evil nature…like everyone else.”
