Up there with vampires and werewolves, the depiction of God and the Devil are something we've seen time and again in pop culture. While God is often represented as some bearded old guy sitting on a glowing throne (or sometimes, just played by Morgan Freeman), the devil is typically shown as a red dude sporting a pair of horns and brandishing a pitchfork.
Now, one religious expert has debunked what we thought we knew about the Devil and made their own prediction of what he'd look like.
Futurist Jared Brock has spent years analyzing passages in the Bible and even penned the book, A Devil Named Lucifer. According to him, the red guy with horns is way off the mark about what Satan really looks like.
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Speaking to Mail Online, Brock painted a very different picture and suggested that the Devil is a spiritual being instead of a physical one. Like when the Devil appeared as a snake to tempt Adam and Eve,he will apparently appear in different attractive forms: "There's two words in the Bible for the devil. One means accuser, and one means adversary. Nothing is saying the devil can be in all places at all times. He's not omnipresent like God is."
As for the idea that the devil breathes fire upon the souls of Hell, the Book of Revelations writes differently: "The serpent poured water like a river out of his mouth after the woman, to sweep her away with a flood."
Brock explains: "It's vital we know what the devil really looks like—in both a material and spiritual sense—so we can more easily spot him at work in the world around us."
"He rarely appears as the water-spewing dragon. Fear is not nearly as powerful as seduction." When it comes to Hell, it's not some shadowy realm filled with lakes of molten lava. Instead, the Bible refers to five or six different places that are dubbed the 'underside of the afterlife'.
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Brock continues: "Are these physical? Are they spiritual? Are they forever? Are they for a limited period of time? And the answer to all of that is we just don't know."
Christianity maintains that Satan is a fallen angel from Heaven, with Revelation 12:7-9 stating: "And war broke out in heaven: Michael and his angels fought with the dragon; and the dragon and his angels fought, but they [a]did not prevail, nor was a place found for [b]them in heaven any longer."
Interestingly, the name 'Lucifer' is only mentioned once in the Bible, as Isaiah 14:12 reads: "How you are fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How you are cut down to the ground, that didst lay low the nations!"
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As for the misconception of how we see the Devil, Brock said: "I think culture just got so obsessed with this idea of this little red devil on your shoulder haunting you at all times."
Finally, we can't blame the Devil for our wicked actions, with Brock concluding: "We've all heard the phrase The devil made you do it. The devil has never made anyone do anything. The devil, the devil can't make you pull the trigger and shoot someone."