Berikut ini adalah daftar 10 atas fenomena yang paling sering dikutip sebagai bukti keberadaan Iblis, tetapi sebelum kita melanjutkan, mari kita setuju pada definisi dari Devil: di sini kita akan berarti personifikasi kejahatan yang digambarkan dalam Kristen Alkitab sebagai mantan malaikat yang diusir dari Surga dan yang memimpin pasukan kecilnya sendiri setan kecil di neraka. Ia mungkin paling diakui oleh ketelanjangan merah, kuku terbelah dan bercabang ekor, walaupun gambar ini akrab tidak muncul sampai abad ke-12.
Top 10: Signs The Devil Exists. Some say that they know the Devil exists because they heard his album, My World 2.0. It’s an easy joke to make, that this or that repellent phenomenon is a sure sign that the Devil exists, but for true believers of the Christian faith, it’s not a joke. The return of the Devil to Earth is foretold — sort of — in Revelations, and since his return coincides with the end of days, believers have reason to be wary.
What follows is a top 10 list of the phenomena most commonly cited as proof of the existence of the Devil, but before we go on, let’s agree on a definition of the Devil: here we’ll mean the personification of evil depicted in the Christian Bible as the former archangel who was cast out of Heaven and who leads his own little army of lesser demons in Hell. He is perhaps best recognized by his red nudity, cloven hooves and forked tail, although this familiar image did not emerge until the 12th century. Now that that’s out of the way, let’s get started.
No.10 – Testimonial
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Satu penginjil modern yang tampak sangat yakin keberadaan Iblis adalah pendiri Club 700 Pat Robertson. Ia praktis membuat hidupnya – hidup nya sangat menguntungkan – dengan mengenali Iblis dalam kehidupan modern.
No.10 – Testimonials. Eye-witness testimony in a court of law is steadily losing its credibility, but in the pursuit of proving that the Devil is real, this has been a bedrock. Take your pick among Matthew, Mark or Luke, whose New Testament Gospels all attest to Jesus spending 40 days in the desert being tempted by the Devil. We have to presume that this story originates from Jesus himself, since no other documents exist to support the source being anyone else. So, Jesus says he was with the Devil, and believers would never suggest Jesus was a liar or a braggart, therefore the Devil must exist.
One modern evangelist who seems especially convinced of the Devil’s existence is 700 Club founder Pat Robertson. He practically makes his living — his very lucrative living — by spotting the Devil in modern life.
No.9 – Secret Societies
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No.9 – Secret Societies. Secret societies with closed memberships rarely engender public sympathy, but few have been accused of being in the service of Satan as often as the Masons, the Illuminati and the New World Order — organizations accused of either attempting to overthrow the status quo or of having already done so. The most prominent whipping boy is Illuminati founder and alleged right-hand man of the Devil himself, Adam Weishaupt, an 18th-century German philosopher.
No.8 – wabah
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No.8 – Plagues. God, the Devil’s nemesis, generally gets credit for unleashing widespread plagues on humanity, pretty consistently interpreted in accord with the Old Testament as punishment by God of his people for their not being up to par. However, during the bubonic plagues that crippled much of Europe during the Middle Ages, a handful of scapegoats emerged, among them the Jews for their rejection of Jesus, and the Devil himself, merely up to his old tricks.
No.7 – Satanisme
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No.7 – Satanism. The overt worship of Satan — what could provide more proof of a slippery being’s existence than a religion built to worship him? In reality, “Satanism” as a term represents a variety of different religious groups with their own orthodoxies, including the Temple of Set and the First Satanic Church, as well as Satanism inspired by charismatic leaders like Anton LeVay. If their mere existence weren’t proof enough that the Devil is real, true believers in America got a big shock in 2005, when the Supreme Court recognized and gave stronger legal standing to so-called “pagan” religions, including Satanism, in Cutter vs. Wilkinson.
No.6 – The sign of the devil.
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No.6 – The sign of the devil. Can a simple hand sign be proof of the Devil’s existence? To some true believers it certainly is. World leaders have, with what seems like increasing frequency, been photographed making the sign — in which the thumb pins down the middle and ring fingers, while the outer fingers are extended. This includes the last three U.S. presidents and the current pope. The sign has a long association with heavy metal — and therefore Satanic influence — and it also happens to be an exact duplicate of the “Hook ‘em Horns” hand sign made by students and fans of the University of Texas Longhorns.
No.5 – Sihir
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No.5 – Witchcraft. The practice of witchcraft was described by Pope Paul XXII in the 14th century as having made “a pact with hell,” and witches have been on the Christian radar ever since. In fact, witches weren’t fully legitimized until a couple of monks, with the consent of the Vatican, wrote Malleus Maleficarum, a 15th century “Witches and Witchcraft for Dummies.” The Malleus takes the position that witches exist. It takes as given that the Devil exists, that he targets human lust as a natural weakness, and that women have an unquenchable thirst for sex and are therefore easy prey.
No.4 – Adolf Hitler
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No.4 – Adolf Hitler. For our times, no one person has done more to bolster the notion of evil as a functional reality than Adolf Hitler. Yet, according to Robert Alan Goldberg in Enemies Within, beyond merely confirming the existence of evil after the fact, when the world learned the true horror of the gas chambers, Hitler’s overwhelming charisma and growing power, coupled with his systematic attempt to take over the world, had many people profiling him as a good match with the beast of the Book of Revelations. In the new millennium, televangelist Pat Robertson worries of a rising figure in Europe, “who, like Hitler, resembles the Antichrist of the Bible.”
No.3 – godaan Fisik
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Sekali lagi, meskipun, itu tidak selalu wanita: Pada tahun 2005, dalam sebuah surat pengakuan untuk di New Life Church, ex-Pastor Ted Haggard mengisyaratkan berperang dengan setan tentang seksualitas sendiri.
No.3 – Physical temptation. Physical temptation, by tradition, generally (but not always) refers to women. They are the symbolic source of all true physical temptation, in part because they have been made spiritually weak by a natural hunger for carnal desire. Recall that in Genesis 3, the Devil appears to Adam and Eve in the form of a serpent, intent on getting Adam to eat an apple. When he realizes that he can’t tempt Adam directly, he takes the indirect route, through Eve, who can’t resist. As we saw in the entry on witchcraft, the Devil knows how to take advantage of human lust.
Again, though, it’s not always women: In 2005, in a confessional letter to his New Life Church, ex-Pastor Ted Haggard hinted at warring with demons regarding his own sexuality.
No.2 – eksorsisme
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Pada bulan Oktober 2010, Jan David Clark akan diadili di Texas karena membunuh istrinya. Dia tidak menyangkal bahwa hal itu terjadi, tapi ia mengklaim bahwa ia sedang melakukan pengusiran setan pada dirinya, dan iblis pergi dari padanya dan membuatnya membunuhnya.
No.2 – Exorcisms. The Catholic Church’s chief exorcist is Father Gabriele Amorth, who has served in that capacity for a quarter century and has seen over 70,000 cases of exorcism. Amorth is hardly the most celebrated exorcist in history — that title would have to go to Jesus, who is described in the Gospels as having rid demonic spirits from dozens and dozens of people. Following his death, his disciples struggled to repeat his success until, according to Acts 16:16, they performed the exorcism “in the name of Jesus,” a practice that continues to this day.
In October 2010, Jan David Clark will go on trial in Texas for murdering his wife. He doesn’t deny that it happened, but he claims that he was performing an exorcism on her, and the devil went from her to him and made him kill her.
No.1 – Kitab Suci
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Apapun deskripsi tugasnya, tulisan suci, untuk orang Kristen konservatif dan fundamentalis, adalah firman Allah, dan Allah, tampaknya, tidak akan berbohong tentang hal seperti itu, akan Dia?
No.1 – Scripture. The ultimate proof of the Devil is in the pudding. Already referred to several times in this top 10, the Biblical account of the Devil is predictably scattered and uneven. There are several incarnations of this evil spirit throughout, ranging from the clever serpent of Genesis to the fiery rock star of Revelations, but in the books of Job, 1 Chronicles and Zechariah, he is featured as a key member of God’s heavenly council who frequently acts on God’s behalf.
Whatever his job description, the scriptures are, for conservative Christians and fundamentalists, the literal word of God, and God, it seems, wouldn’t lie about such a thing, would He?
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