I know the devil, he’s far more terrifying than in the movies… you can feel his power

One of my most vivid childhood memories is of my dad – a youth pastor in Guelph, Ontario – performing an exorcism over the phone.

As I walked into his office, running late for Bible class, he covered the receiver and whispered, wide-eyed: ‘Go downstairs and pray – I’m on the phone with a demon.’

After an hour or so, he came out, all business taken care of. And I wanted to know everything.

What I learned that day – and subsequently, through a lifetime of studying the Bible’s earliest translations – has taught me that there are a lot of crazy myths out there about the evil one, mostly perpetuated by film, TV, and popular culture.

But nearly everything we think we know about him is wrong.

What does he look like? Why doesn’t he have a bellybutton? And what does 666 really mean? Let’s dive right in.

What is the devil’s name?

Let’s start with the fact that his name isn’t actually Lucifer.

The word lucifer doesn’t appear once in the original Hebrew and Greek Bibles. It shows up in a Latin translation a few centuries later, but the word is never explicitly used as a name for the devil.

A lucifer is a light-bearer. One of the earliest marketed friction matches was called a lucifer. The Bible describes Jesus as a light-bearer, and nature, too, is a light-bearer.

But Lucifer? He’s not a lucifer – it’s believed a verse in the book of Isaiah in the Latin Vulgate (a late fourth-century translation of the Bible) originally led to the confusion, and the name stuck.

By the way, his name isn’t Devil or Satan, either. Those are English words. 

The original words in Hebrew and Greek are hasatan and diabolos. If we wanted to give him an English name that packs the same verbal punch and meaning that Hebrew and Greek readers would’ve felt when they read those words, we’d have called him Accuser-Adversary.

What does the devil look like?

Contrary to popular imagination, according the the Bible, Accuser-Adversary isn’t a big red scary dude with horns, a pitchfork and a cape. In fact, nearly everything we picture about the devil is simply wrong.

Horns? That’s an import from the Greek god Bacchus, the Egyptian goddess Isis and the ancient fertility god Baal.

Red eyes? They come from a medieval manuscript called the Codex Gigas.

The mustache and/or goatee are from the god Pan, and the cape and tights come from a Faust play. The wings come from Dante’s Inferno and the red skin is likely a callback to the Egyptian god Set. 

The fiery sulfur breath? In the Bible, the book of Revelation says that he spews water.

And the pitchfork, well, the Roman god of war (Mars) wields a spear, and the Roman god of the underworld (Pluto) carries a two-pronged instrument called a bident.

We don’t have a single artistic impression of Accuser-Adversary prior to the sixth century. When he makes his first possible appearance in a fresco in Ravenna, Italy, he’s depicted as being blue.

So what does the devil actually look like?

Well, being a spirit, he doesn’t have a physical body, so we can rule out any permanent features like toe-nails, nipples, wisdom teeth and a belly button.

The Bible says he disguises himself as an angel of light, presenting like a radiant messenger. In other words, he pretends to be a lucifer.

So don’t worry about things that seem scary, repulsive and threatening. Fear is not nearly as powerful as seduction.

If you want to be keenly aware of the satanic, stay on the lookout for beauty without humility, riches without contribution, knowledge without wisdom, action without mission, justice without mercy and receiving without giving. 

All that glitters is not gold.

The Antichrist

The word is antichristos in Greek, and it means ‘the one who opposes the messiah.’  

According to that translation, anyone who doesn’t believe God came down to Earth as Jesus is an antichrist. 

But is there also a specific Antichrist? The author of the prophetic book of Revelation seems to think so. 

A quick recap of what humanity is said to endure before the Antichrist arrives: we’ll have war. We’ll have hyperinflation. We’ll see famine and disease hit a quarter of the Earth. We’ll have a bigger earthquake than any in history. A third of the Earth will be scorched by fire.

A third of the fish and the ships in the sea will be destroyed. Some kind of poison will affect a third of all rivers and springs. There will be some sort of volcano that blocks out the sun, and some sort of five-month metallic locust/scorpion/horse/lion army attack.

Four countries on the waters of the Euphrates (Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran seem likely) will amass an army of 200 million soldiers and murder a third of humanity.

So far, so horrific.

Then an entity rises to bring order to all this chaos. 

Previous readings of these prophesies have suggested the Antichrist will control mankind through gadgets and the internet.

And last year, Charlamagne tha God said that voting for Trump was like endorsing the Antichrist. 

But it appears from my studies that, at first anyway, the Antichrist of Revelation is inanimate – perhaps a supercomputer? 

Then, by using new powers or technologies, ‘the beast’ takes on an image and is given the ability to both speak and destroy those who refuse to worship it. 

One theory experts have put forward is that a respected deceased figure could be ‘re-animated’ with advanced hologram technology or as a physical AI humanoid that takes over the global economy. 

The devil on your shoulder 

Millions of people believe the devil is sitting on their shoulders, personally tempting them night and day.

But nothing in the Bible says the devil is omnipresent, that is, that he can be in multiple places at the same time. 

Because he can’t be everywhere at once, he has to travel from place to place like any other spirit. If you do the math, in a world with 8 billion people, over the course of a century, Accuser-Adversary could only spend 0.39 seconds with each of us.

In all likelihood, most humans will go their entire lives without ever encountering the devil at all.

That is not to say they won’t encounter the lies, accusations and life-destroying systems he has been designing and detonating in human hearts since the beginning of time. In World War II, almost none of the Allies ever came face-to-face with Adolf Hitler, but they encountered his lies and allies from Belgium to North Africa and we’re still digging up bombs planted by Nazis 80 years ago. 

In the same way, you can’t walk ten feet without encountering a dozen of Accuser-Adversary’s schemes, in everything from shopping addiction to the promise of viral internet fame.

666 – The Mark of the Beast

Revelation says a day is coming when humans will be required to bear a mark, considered by modern readers to perhaps be a chip implant, ‘so that no one can buy or sell unless he has the mark.’  

This mark will contain the name of the beast or his symbolic number: 666.

It’s important to note that this is not the devil’s number – Revelation says very clearly that 666 is the number of a man.

So what does 666 represent?

Perhaps it’s a reference to wealth. King Solomon, the richest man on earth, received 666 talents of gold each year. 

The Bible tells us that God created the earth in six days and rested on the seventh. So if seven represents God’s perfection, then six could represent man’s fallenness – humanity’s false religions, false politics and false economics. 

Kanye West – notoriously anti-Semitic – once drove a car with a ‘666’ license plate to his son Saint’s basketball game. 

And in 2021, the number 666 bus to the Polish seaside resort of Hel was scrapped after a campaign by Christians declared the route ‘satanic.’ 

If you add up all the consecutive numbers from one to 36 (ie, 1 + 2 + 3 etc) you get 666, so maybe 666 just represents the inevitable conclusion of humanity’s continuous rebellion.

The number might mean all or none of these. We just don’t know. But clearly 666 is associated with rebellion against God. 

How powerful is Satan? 

Most people wrongly believe the devil is the source of evil or at least the personification of evil. According to the Bible, neither of these things is true.

Martin Luther said that Christian believers actually have three enemies — the world, the flesh and the devil. Culture has seriously over-indexed on the devil’s power, discounted any personal responsibility, and all but ignored the demonic and satanic worldviews and systems that run our societies.

Even if the devil doesn’t  exist, evil would still exist. There are more than eight billion free will spirits (human beings) currently living on planet Earth, and every day, we all do something that goes against God’s created order.

Contrary to popular belief, the devil can’t make you do anything. 

‘The devil made me do it’ is a lie. He can try to tempt and trap but he cannot make you do anything.

A Devil Named Lucifer: Uncovering the Diabolical Life of Satan and How to Resist Him by Jared Brock is published by Baker Publishing