God, Satan and Armageddon

I freely admit that there are many varying doctrines of Christian belief. The more fundamentalist and literal-minded they are, the more silly, and easily refuted. Thus it is not within the scope of this blog to debate the more liberal or figurative flavors of Christianity, merely because they require more in-depth argumentation and much more nuance. (It is easier to refute any and all known versions of "God" as being nonsensical.) So I stick with the straightforward fundie Christians. With that in mind, here is one lone paragraph from Joseph Chambers of Rapture Ready; "Hell is rehearsing for Armageddon." (Note, I really have no use for the rest of his essay, for it is absurd. This is the one single idea that really has any impact on Christianity in a general sense, the rest is cultist uber-belief .)

The entire “One World Government” and “One World Religion” that Satan will promote and control is his grand scheme to create such a world power and spiritual (evil) force that he can finally succeed in defeating God and take his seat as the “Supreme Authority.” You may say it is crazy to believe that Satan is expecting to win. How can you read his grand design for world control, economic mastery (by his controlling all buying and selling), and the entire religious harlotry of Biblical prophecy, and not believe Satan plans to win? Satan is preparing the ultimate effort to remove God from His throne, to defeat the Lord Jesus as the Savior of men and to defile the Holy Spirit, God’s Spirit of Holiness. Believe the Word of God; Satan will lose.

I guess the most obvious is this, why would any supernatural being be obsessed with material things like wealth and power? It makes no sense whatsoever. Seriously, just look at how the supernatural is described by Christians. It is the realm of miracles, a total nonvalue of the material, timeless infinity, no cause and effect, unlimited pure knowledge and power beyond everything in the material realm. I would also add that the supernatural is wholly unaffected by the laws of physics or even nature as a whole.

So his own realm why then, would a supernatural being care in the least for the riches and materialisticness of the real world? Why would Satan care about money, gold, or wealth. For in

his own realm he can generate, out of nothing, an infinitely larger amount of gold and diamonds and money, etc.

The obvious answer is that Satan does this to entice us humans over to him with dreams of wealth untold. But just how realistic is that? Why the need to accumulate natural supplies of gold when miracles can produce so much more?

Now we've pondered the obvious, now let us consider the less obvious. why would Satan want to control this world? It is material, natural, after all. The Bible says that this world will not last forever, only the supernatural realm lasts forever, so why would Satan want to limit himself to something that is quite temporary? If his battle is against God, then this makes no sense whatsoever. In analogy, it would be like an enemy commander saying to his troops and the superior battle force, that he has no intention of winning the war, all he wants is to win some small, insignificant battle which in repect to the entire war is utterly meaningless. This is true because no matter how you slice Christianity, it teaches that this natural material realm is utterly meaningless in the scope of the Godly supernatural realm. Just look at these New Testament passages:
"Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things" [Col 3:2 NIV]
"There are also heavenly bodies and there are earthly bodies; but the splendor of the heavenly bodies is one kind, and the splendor of the earthly bodies is another" [1 Cor 15:40 NIV]
"Now we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands" [2 Cor 5:1 NIV]
"So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal." [2 Cor 4:18 NIV]
"those who use the things of the world, as if not engrossed in them. For this world in its present form is passing away" [1 Cor 7:31 NIV]

All of this really has to do with this passage, quite possibly my favorite:

Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? [1 Cor 1:20 NIV]

And yet it is the foolish knowledge of this world that has made everyone as happy and prosperous as we are. Cell phones, microwaves, medicine, medicine, medicine, and can I also mention medical technology... All foolish knowledge in God's realm.

And in Satan's realm as well, since it is all in passing. I guess the really foolish are those who buy into this nonsense of God and his arch-nemesis, the devil.