Exposing Satan's Playbook The Perry Stone

serpent to deceive Eve (Gen 3:1–2). The serpent was a creature that the first couple was familiar with. Josephus wrote concerning the serpent: While all the living creatures had one language, at that time the serpent, which then lived together with Adam and his wife, shewed an envious disposition, at his supposal of their living happily . . . he persuaded the woman, out of a malicious intention, to taste of the tree of knowledge, telling them, that in that tree was the knowledge of good and evil. 1 Scripture says, “The serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness” (2 Cor. 11:3). We know that the serpent is an image used for Satan (Rev. 12:9, 14–15). I suggest to you that if Satan had entered the garden as himself, as a fallen angel without using the body of the serpent, he would have been easily detected as a trespasser and identified as an unwanted guest. But the enemy never shows up in his true identity. Paul warned that Satan can transform himself as an angel of light (2 Cor. 11:14). In the New Testament Paul was continually hindered in his ministry, and he compiled a list of those physical, spiritual, and satanic hindrances in 2 Corinthians 11:23–28. Yet he realized that the invisible and often undetected organizer of his opposition was a messenger (in Greek, an angel) of Satan (2 Cor. 12:7). Paul wrote to both the Roman church and the church at Thessalonica and indicated that although he had attempted to visit them both, Satan had “much hindered” him “time and