Originally published in the December 1971 issue of The Christadelphian magazine
The Devil – the Great Deceiver
EVERY campaign canvasser knows that if he is to have a serious biblical discussion, the topic of the devil is bound to arise. Jehovah’s Witnesses especially are known to hold the usual view of Satan with more than usual vigour. And every canvasser knows, too, that to engage in individual “text-swopping” on this subject leads to a “Yes, it is,” “No, it isn’t” kind of situation, from which there is no profitable exit. The only remedy is a broadly based treatment which aims at drawing out the significance of the Devil and Satan as a whole.
This Brother Peter Watkins has done in “The Devil—The Great Deceiver”. He deals with the simple meaning of the terms and with their use in Scripture. He treats all the familiar passages and all the well-known difficulties. The Serpent in Eden, Satan in Job, and the Devil in the Temptation of Christ are all here; but such is Brother Watkins’s careful and penetrating study that there are many other biblical parallels here as well which most of us will never have noticed before. And this most comprehensive and satisfying treatment concludes with six chapters on human nature, the struggle against sin, and the problem of evil which, in the opinion of this reviewer, form the best easily understood review of the topics in our literature.
The whole is written in Brother Watkins’s well-known conversational style. The keen campaigner, the careful Bible student, and the housewife who has time to be neither of these, will all find in this book a rich treasure of Scriptural understanding. It is heartily to be recommended.
