Satan’s Chronicles; A Prelude

I’ve been working on a book for about six years, “Satan’s History of the United States”. I originally intended to model it after Schweikart and Allen’s best seller Patriot’s History of the United States, which is distinctive because, unlike standard chronological histories, it’s riddled with moral and cultural observations that highlight the uniqueness of America and Americans, as compared to all the histories of the world that had gone before it.

In my view we have not yet reached, as some believe, the Gibbons “decline and fall” phase of our history. This is because our makeup is manifestly different than that which comprised the Roman, or any other civilization, that had gone before us.

Our genetic makeup is different. We are a case of first instance. Our genetic cultural makeup is not the same as the other empire civilizations, and it would take several generations for our culture to regress.

So far there is no ancient or even primordial tug pulling us into the abyss where Rome or Greece fell. At least in my view.

But we are nearing another tipping point (there have been others) where we have to decide whether we will write the script for our failure or add more chapters to the story as to why America, as created, is so unique. The way we ended slavery was one. The way we went from Anglo-Saxon to becoming a polyglot of cultures, a melting pot, while holding onto those unique core principles, was another.

You see, America changed everything for Satan. Actually, it expanded the dilemma Satan faced because of  Christ, for it proved that the virtues taught by Christ could be blended into the common soil of a peoples from the farmstead instead of from the royal court. America flipped the Devil’s world plan and his world view.

The reason the Devil was caught unawares in 1787 is that he’d dozed through over 175 years of this little laboratory experiment in North America simple because it was nothing but a bunch of farmers and fishermen who settled this territory. He continued to manage his worldwide corporate affairs as he’d always done, from the front office of the top floor of his executive office building for the past thousand years.

It would take another century before he would clearly see the enormous potential, and threat, this little upstart posed to his worldwide empires and creations.

Satan took it personally. Still does.

That is, if you believe is that sort of thing.

This is why I need to lay the groundwork in my “Devil’s History” of just how Satan managed his properties and caused History to happen, compared to how God managed His properties. That’s called “background” in government bureaucracy-speak.

First, it wasn’t exactly eyeball-to-eyeball, for while Satan hated God, he was never his equal. He hated that too..

However God arranged His front office, they didn’t have casual Fridays, or weekly chat sessions. The archangels knew their stations, all except Satan, or Lucifer as some chroniclers called him. And that is likely why he jumped ship. JRR Tolkien, of “Lord of the Rings” fame, in The Silmarillion, surmised that God, before the world was born, gave his angels themes from which to compose beautiful music. Satan, the most talented of the archangels, didn’t like either the music style or the collaboration, so composed music that threw discord into the themes God had desired. After two or three aborted attempts Satan/Lucifer either jumped ship or was expelled.

If you’re into music, let’s imagine that Beethoven’s lead violinist was Keith Richards, and Keith just had this totally different sound banging around in his head, and he argued and complained with Ludwig, but to no avail ….not just because of different tastes in music, but Keith actually believed he was the better song writer in the first place.

Now Larry Schweikart, who co-authored Patriot’s History, just mentioned, was a drummer for the rock band Steppenwolf, so would probably disagree with how I depicted this hatred of Satan for God. But Tolkien chose music as the meme, not me. Satan’s hatred arose out of jealousy (Envy), which is a major theme of Evil that has defined history since time began..

So Satan’s principal reason for being, then, has been to deny God His plans, and only secondarily, to acquire souls for his own domain in the underworld.

God’s execution of His themes do not seem to be a direct reaction to anything Satan had accomplished, or in anyway a direct attack on him. It’s as if Satan was simply a gnat in His ointment…which enrages Satan more.

The Devil wasn’t getting any respect.

This means God did not cause the creation of America just to annoy Satan. He was probably sticking to a plan He’d begun at least with his Covenant with Abraham, 4000 years earlier. God knows Satan will always be there, striking at His heel. Again, an annoyance. A fly in the buttermilk.

Keep that in mind. God’s powers are limitless, but He works with rules that He imposed upon Himself since Eve took that first bite. The contest between Good and Evil was always a contest about choices that only Man can make.

So, if you do believe in this sort of thing, Satan’s war with God go back millennia, all the way to the Garden. The wars that Old Clootie carried on against God, first with his snake dance in the Garden, and then the snake godheads he created to steer people toward his own brand of worship, are a book unto themselves. An interesting history, I need only to outline those several thousands of years into a few pages as background for this tale of America and the Devil.

Satan’s clear sailing through History turned on a dime with the appearance, execution and resurrection of God’s Son, Jesus.

Again, you don’t have to believe this, but the facts are unarguable that 40 days after Jesus’ fabled resurrection, the Word that Christ had arisen went out in 120 different directions, and Satan was caught entirely flatfooted. I remind you, this is a fact, an unarguable, historical fact, even if you prefer not to believe any of that Son of God stuff. At that moment, slowly at first, but historically measurable, the world, at its roots, began to drift away from the top-down management plan that had controlled for thousands of years.

Fact: When the Word went out the world began to change. Period. And the snookered-once-again Satan would have to go back to his drawing board. It would take him about 800 years to regain at least partial control of the world as he’d always known it, only as the “spiritual head of only half the world, while the political head of the whole of it.” (Mark Twain.)

Satan’s blind spot was his being totally enraptured by managing from the front office. After all, he had created the whole management concept of the “Front Office” from the time that Man began writing, trading, and organizing labor, around the Bronze Age, circa 5000 BC.

From that time to Christ, Satan was both the political and spiritual head of the whole world. He even proclaimed this fact when he encountered Christ in the Wilderness, for he offered Christ all the kingdoms of the world if Jesus would just switch sides. He knew why Jesus…well, actually, only thought he knew why…the Son of God had come to earth. And offered Jesus a deal.

The Devil guessed wrong, and would soon find himself losing ground as both the political and spiritual head of the world. To staunch the bleeding he had to give some spiritual ground to reclaim his political realm, by allowing the king system, which he’d invented much earlier, to do a power-sharing agreement with the still relatively new Church, which ostensibly belonged to God.

Soon Satan would begin to feel secure again in his new relationship with God’s minions on earth since his kings were totally in charge of the Church’s protection. Year after year the kings grew in appetites and greed, despite their relationship with the Church, and it grew even larger as that link with the Church(es) and God diminished, from Napoleon to Marx, where the state had become a god unto itself, taking on many shapes.

So far they have failed but at great cost to mankind. But that they failed at all is due to those same two interventions by God into Man’s affairs in the First Century and 18th Century…both events coming about while Satan snoozed.

Since 1787 Satan has had to adapt and improvise and work with an entirely different class of people. I imagine he hasn’t had to wash his hands as often since he first pulled the Egyptians out of the muck during the Bronze Age. In all those centuries Satan had never had to get up-close and personal with people who had dirt under their fingernails, but in America, and even in Europe, more and more of those leaders, good and evil, arose from dirt gardens he hadn’t planted.

Let’s just say Satan had to become a soil scientist; a spiritual agronomist. And he’s gotten pretty good at it. His only problem is that he is two millennia behind the original planting of that soil. Today, removing all memory of that Original Husbandman is his primary objective, as well as the Farmers’ Almanac He bequeathed Mankind.

But Old Clootie is making inroads.

I’m writing this to elicit comments, suggestions, ideas, as to how this story might unfold, since the final chapters of the story will likely be many years after we’re gone in the making.

Watching Satan try to regain his spurs since 1787 is an interesting tale…

…even if you don’t believe in that sort of thing.