The god of this world

Scripture says that the state of humanity in all its phases is the result of an experimental career upon which the parents of the race embarked without the sanction of God and in violation of His express command. It tells us further that the conception of this experiment did not originate with man, but was prompted by a spiritual being of great wisdom and power, who aimed to be man's leader in spiritual matters and to direct his career. We were not told what were the full results which Satan hoped to accomplish by alienating the human race from God and attaching it to himself, but we do know that he seeks to be worshipped (Luke iv. 6, 7; Rev. xiii. 4). It is, moreover, evident that his plan did not disclose as its object the destruction or injury of the race, but that, on the contrary, he represented himself as solicitous for the well-being of humanity, and for the achievement by it of the best possible results that are attainable apart from God.

    Because of ignorance of what the Scriptures teach about Satan many people would violently resent the statement that the world is following his leadership. This, however, is not an occasion for a show of resentment. No candid person will deny that the enterprise upon which men are engaged consists essentially in the attempt to organize the best possible world, and to achieve the best possible conditions that can be attained apart from God.

    Who, then, is the god of this world; that is, its spiritual leader and organizer, the person according to whose ideals its activities are planned and its course directed? Satan himself declared that all the kingdoms of the earth and the glory of them are his, and that he can "give them to whomsoever he will" (Luke iv. 5, 6). This is a startling statement, and is not one of his lies, for Scripture repeatedly confirms the statement that Satan is the prince and god of this world (John xx.31; xiv. 30; xvi. 11; Acts xxvi. 18; 2 Cor. iv. 4). We wish to grasp the import of this statement, and then to test is probability by our observations of the great and complex world-system which envelops us.

    Scripture tells us further that the parents of our race were attracted by the supposed advantages of the career upon which Satan urged them to embark, the chief characteristic of that career (as set forth by the tempter), being the opportunity for progress or self-improvement through the pursuit and acquisition of knowledge. The first human pair exercised their power of choice by accepting the career thus offered to them, thereby committing the race to the consequences of that choice, the first consequence being death, or separation from God. Here again we pause to note that the Bible is the only Book which offers an explanation of the stupendous fact of death. Infidel philosophy can but ignore it. Why should man die? Infidel philosophy can give no answer.

     According to Scripture, therefore, we have in the world-system around us the consequence of the acceptance by the human family of Satan's programme and leadership, it having pleased God in His wisdom to permit the working out of this experiment until His time shall come for bringing it to its inevitable end.

     It is particularly to be observed in the Scripture narrative that the Satanic programme, spread before the first man and woman, contained only what the natural mind adjudges to be a desirable and legitimate object of pursuit. Only one thing stood in the way, namely, a Divine commandment which to all appearance was arbitrary. Under the force of plausible reasoning that restraint was overcome. God's wisdom and His love in imposing it were called in question. Man then, for the first time, set himself to do what he has been prone to do ever since – namely, to question and pass judgment upon the expediency of a Divine commandment. He became, in a word, a "higher critic"; that is to say, a man who assumes to criticise the Word of God. Thus it was that the human family entered upon the stupendous experiment of devising a world-system according to Satanic principles.

Philip Mauro, The World and Its God, 1907, pp. 22-26