Weird Stuff in the Bible

Who is the “God of this World” in II Corinthians 4?
II Corinthians 4:3-4

Introduction
Most of us would agree that God and Satan are about as different as you can get. That they are such polar opposites that it would be virtually impossible to confuse one with the other. That it would be tantamount to heresy to try to compare the two.
And yet, there’s a mystery to the identity of the figure called the “God of this World” in II Corinthians chapter 4.
Verse 4 of that chapter says
In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.
So, the conventional wisdom or assumption that most Christians make is that the “god of this world” must be Satan. The reason being, this figure is said right here to be blinding the minds of unbelievers to prevent them from hearing the Gospel. Sounds like a not-good thing to do, right?
However- that raises the question: if unbelievers have had their minds blinded by Satan, then how is it their fault that the don’t obey the Gospel? How can God hold it against them that they don’t believe if it’s not their fault?
And is it really true that Satan would have the power to blind people to God’s truth?
But then if it’s not Satan, if it’s actually God, then that raises another question: why would God blind people to the truth about Himself?
It’s not clear-cut any way you look at it. And it’s strange that this one mysterious figure could potentially either be God or Satan.
That kind of mistake isn’t like mixing up the ranch dressing with the caesar dressing. This is like mixing up the ranch dressing with boiling hot lava that melts your face off. It shouldn’t be that hard to figure out…yet it kinda is.
I find this to be weird, and I’d like to explore why it’s in the Bible.
Turn to II Corinthians 4, and let’s get weird.
[theme music]

The Context
Welcome to Weird Stuff in the Bible, where we explore scripture passages that are bizarre, perplexing or just plain weird. This is Luke Taylor, and today we’re going to be talking about the identity of the “God of this World” in II Corinthians 4.
And let’s start with where we always do: reviewing the context.
So II Corinthians 4 is in a section where Paul is talking about the responsibility we have as the standard-bearers of the Gospel. As Christians who have the knowledge of the truth revealed to us and have accepted the good news of Jesus dying for our sins, we now have a responsibility to steward that gift. He says in
II Corinthians 4:1-2
Therefore, having this ministry by the mercy of God, we do not lose heart. 2 But we have renounced disgraceful, underhanded ways. We refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God's word, but by the open statement of the truth we would commend ourselves to everyone's conscience in the sight of God.
So when we share the Gospel, he says we shouldn’t hold anything back. Don’t water it down. Don’t obscure some of it because you’re afraid of offending some people. Give people the straight truth. They can do with it what they want. But don’t do anything underhanded in your presentation of the Gospel. Don’t hold anything back.
And this means, some people are going to reject what we say. Why? Well, some will reject the truth because, as they say in some movie that I’ve never actually seen: “they can’t handle the truth.” Some will reject it because it sounds too hard to be a Christian. And some will reject it because their hearts have been veiled to the knowledge of God.
Verses 3 and 4 say:
3 And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. 4 In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.
And so why do they have a veil over their hearts? And who put it there? That, of course, is the question we’ll be studying today. But let’s go ahead and finish up this section of verses real quick.
Verses 5 and 6 say
5 For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus' sake. 6 For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
Clearly here it says that God has shone in our hearts, which means He brought illumination to the spiritual truth that Jesus is God and died for our sins.
But clearly, not everybody receives that message with the same enthusiasm. Some have veiled or darkened hearts, and let’s explore why.

Is it Satan?
So, this is going to be one of those episodes where I will present a couple of possibilities and the evidences for them, and then let you make up your own mind.
So, what is the evidence that this is talking about Satan right here when it says “the god of this world”? First of all, he’s darkening peoples’ hearts to prevent them from hearing the Gospel. That sounds like something the devil would want to do.
But let’s talk about this phrase “the god of this world.” This is not a title that’s used for Satan anywhere else in scripture. Would it be accurate, though, to refer to Satan as a god, and furthermore, the god of our world that we live in right now?
Well, I really won’t quibble with the use of the word “god” to refer to Satan. As I’ve discussed previously on this podcast, going all the way back to the third episode, the word “god” is often used in scripture to refer to various spiritual beings who have ownership of certain sectors of the world. Psalm 82 is a source of the Bible doing this.
Some believe that there is the one true God, and that any other being who is referred to as a god in scripture- like Marduk, or Bel, or Dagon- that these are all just myths. That they are false gods who don’t even actually exist.
I disagree with that; I think a careful reading of scripture will show that there are indeed spiritual beings- especially in the Old Testament- who legitimately exist, but they are malevolent or evil, and they desire to be worshipped as THE God. Call them demons or whatever you want to call them, but there are locations we can go to in scripture to see that there are multiple real gods.
This makes some people uncomfortable because we don’t want to sound like polytheists, and I completely understand that. I don’t consider myself a polytheist. I believe there is one Creator God (with a capital G) who created all things. I believe He reveals himself as Yahweh in the Bible, and that He is supreme over all other spiritual beings both good and evil.
And the Bible refers to these spiritual beings as gods. Again, if you want more information on that, go back to episode 3 of this podcast.
So I’m not upset by the idea of referring to Satan as a lowercase “g” god, if that’s what the Bible is doing here. There’s very much a sense that he is, as a very powerful and influential being in the spirit realm.
But what about the phrase “of this world”? Would it be accurate to say that Satan- even if he can be considered a god- is THE god of this world?
Well, perhaps to answer that, we can look back to the temptation of Jesus in
Matthew 4:8-10
8 Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. 9 And he said to him, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.” 10 Then Jesus said to him, “Be gone, Satan! For it is written,
“‘You shall worship the Lord your God
    and him only shall you serve.’”
So Satan offers Jesus all the kingdoms of the world. Now, remember that this is in the “temptation” of Jesus. If you- the listener today- came to me and said, “Luke, I offer you all the kingdoms of this world if you give me a hundred dollars.” Well, it sounds nice to be king of the world, it would be kind of neat to get some business cards made up that said “king of the world,” and a hundred bucks sounds like a price that would be pretty hard to turn down to do it, especially with inflation being what it is.
But I would not consider that much of a temptation because even if I did give you the money, I’m not confident that you can deliver on your end of the deal. I don’t think you have the capability to give me all the kingdoms of the world. So I wouldn’t be very tempted by this offer, but thanks anyway.
Notice that this is not how Jesus responds to Satan. Jesus doesn’t call him on it and say, “Now you silly little devil, you can’t give me all the kingdoms of the world!” That’s not how Jesus reacts. Jesus accepts it as a serious offer; Jesus turns down the offer on the basis that the price is too high. Bowing down to Satan is not a price that Jesus would be willing to pay.
But I don’t believe Satan would have offered that to Jesus if Satan wasn’t able to deliver on his end of the deal. So there is a sense in which it could be accurate to call Satan the “god of this world.”

Is it God?
But let’s look at an alternative view of this passage. Could the God of this World be…God? Because there’s actually a whole lot more evidence that God owns the world. For example,
Psalm 24:1
The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof,
    the world and those who dwell therein,
Job 41:11
Whatever is under the whole heaven is mine.
Psalm 50:12
for the world and its fullness are mine.
So the phrase “God of this World” would seem to be equally fitting for God. But if that’s who Paul is talking about in II Corinthians 4, then why would it say that God Himself was blinding people from hearing the Gospel? How can that make any sense?
Well, if you listened to last week’s episode, you might know exactly where I’m going with this. We talked about how God would harden someone’s heart, but only if that’s what they truly wanted. If someone desires to reject God, God will harden their heart against Him.
Now, if that seems counterproductive, I understand, but God doesn’t force Himself on people. There are some Christians who think that; I am not one of them. I do believe God gives us a choice whether to accept His ways and accept truth; and that if we reject Him, He’ll harden us against the truth. I have some scriptural evidence for this as well. If we go back one chapter in II Corinthians to
II Corinthians 3:12-16
12 Since we have such a hope, we are very bold, 13 not like Moses, who would put a veil over his face so that the Israelites might not gaze at the outcome of what was being brought to an end. 14 But their minds were hardened. For to this day, when they read the old covenant, that same veil remains unlifted, because only through Christ is it taken away. 15 Yes, to this day whenever Moses is read a veil lies over their hearts. 16 But when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed.
So I believe that as long as someone desires to reject God, God will put a veil on their hearts to prevent them from spiritual insight. They are dead to spiritual truth. Their understanding is darkened.
Some will say: “this is talking about the Jews in II Corinthians 3, this isn’t talking about everybody.” Yes, II Corinthians 3 right there may be referring to the Jewish people, but I believe this is a principle that God applies to everybody. That when someone harbors animosity toward God or toward Jesus or toward the Gospel or toward truth or toward The Holy Spirit, then God in a sense respects that by hardening their heart against Him.
If someone is truly seeking God and seeking truth with an open mind, I don’t believe God is going to harden their heart. God will soften it and draw them nearer to Him. As the scripture says, draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Or as we often say in church: you can have as much of God as you want to. If you want God, truly want God, you’ll find Him. He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.
But here’s what some people do; they’ll say they seek God and they’ll say they seek truth, but in reality, in their minds, they’re thinking: as long as God doesn’t tell me what to do with my money. Or my sexuality. Or my Sunday morning. Or my fill-in-the-blank. Or as long as God doesn’t tell me to forgive parents for what they did to me.
You see, lots of people say that they’re seeking God, but they actually have areas of their lives that they don’t want God to touch with a 10-foot-pole.
So I’ve literally been with kids who went to youth camps or really supernatural services where they saw the Holy Spirit move and saw healings or even said they were filled with the spirit and maybe even spoke in tongues.
And then a couple years later they get a girlfriend or boyfriend who pulls them away from God and within a couple years, they don’t even believe in God anymore. They walk so far away from Him that they get completely dead to Him. And I’m like, how can you have seen the things you saw and experienced the things you experienced and yet you now say you don’t even believe?
But the truth is, belief is a choice. A lot of times- most of the time actually- it’s not evidence that is required to get someone to believe in God. I love apologetics, but it’s usually not William Lane Craig’s Kalam-cosmological arguments that are needed to convince someone that God is real. Almost always, it’s going to be a matter of the heart.
Whether someone is truly willing to turn their life over to God if they have proof that He exists. Whether someone is honestly seeking truth with an open mind.
And so if God is the God of this world in II Corinthians 4, then it’s still within God’s character to “blind the minds of the unbelievers.”

Hardening and Delusions
It says he did it with the Jewish people- I believe still right now today- in
Romans 11:25
25 Lest you be wise in your own sight, I do not want you to be unaware of this mystery, brothers: a partial hardening has come upon Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in.
So he’s saying, Don’t think you’re so much smarter than the Jews just because you came to faith and they didn’t. They have a hardening on them. That’s a whole theological issue I won’t necessarily get into today, but I’m just establishing the point right now that God will darken people’s understanding if He wants to.
It says God will do it in the end times, in what I believe is the tribulation period, in II Thessalonians 2. It talks about the antichrist right there, and how the Antichrist will deceive unbelievers into following him, but it also says that God is going to help people believe the Antichrist’s lies. Really? Yes really.
II Thessalonians 2:9-12
9 The coming of the lawless one is by the activity of Satan with all power and false signs and wonders, 10 and with all wicked deception for those who are perishing, because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. 11 Therefore God sends them a strong delusion, so that they may believe what is false, 12 in order that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness.
God is going to help some people believe the lies of the Antichrist in the end times. God will send them a delusion. What would they need a delusion for? Well I believe that the Antichrist will be such an audacious liar that you would have to be an idiot to believe some of the things he says.
If there’s a pre-trib rapture, he may very well tell people it’s aliens.
If there are earthquakes that shake the whole earth and one-third of the waters in the earth turn to blood, the Antichrist may very well tell people it’s climate change.
When there is sickness and disease unleashed across the planet and one-fourth of the population dies, he may tell people to get his mark of the beast and it’ll protect you from getting sick, people will be lining up to take it.
And his lies are going to be so ridiculous- so over-the-top- I believe- that you would have to be stupid to believe anything he says.
But God is going to help people be stupid. He’ll send them a strong delusion that they will believe the lie. Believe what is false.
And why will God do it? Because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. It’s not because God just doesn’t like people. God doesn’t want to be mean. God loves the world so much He sent His only begotten Son.
But when people don’t want God- and don’t want Jesus- and they think the Holy Spirit is something stupid- and they reject the truth- God is not going to force Himself on them. God will send them a strong delusion and they’ll believe anything, no matter how idiotic it is.
Now maybe you say, “Luke, that’s talking about the Jews, that’s talking about the end times, why do you think God would do that kind of stuff right now?” Well, let me give you another example. We’ll go back to this thing I was talking about last week: God’s abandonment wrath.

The Abandonment Wrath of God
And fair warning, I’ll use some examples here that might not be family friendly. If you’re listening with your kids around, this might be the place to send them off to play with Legos or something. Because we’ll be talking about the state of things in the world, and this world is not a very family friendly place, and so for me to get practical and apply today’s lesson to the things going on is going to offend some people.
The abandonment wrath of God. This is what Romans 1 means when it says in
Verses 19 through 21
19 For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. 20 For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. 21 For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.
You see, God has made His reality plain to the world. There is no logic in thinking that all of this universe came from nothing. I saw a science exhibit just recently where it started by saying something like, “We still have no idea how the earliest forms of life formed from non-living materials.”
And I’m like, of course we have an idea how life started on this earth. This is the first generation in the history of the world that suddenly has no idea. Up until about a hundred years ago, everybody acknowledged a divine creator as a source of all life and matter in the universe. Even if mankind didn’t always agree about the identity of the creator, we at least acknowledged a creator.
But this is the first time that we’ve truly embraced the nonsensical idea that everything came from nothing at all. And so God says
Later in Romans 1, verses 24 and 25
24 Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, 25 because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.
Verse 26 and 27
26 For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; 27 and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.
Verse 28
And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done.
You see, all the depravity you see playing out in society right now, gender confusion, people mutilating their bodies, people saying every filthy form of perversion should be celebrated, nudists walking the streets during pride month in major cities, what is that all about?
I believe we’re seeing Romans 1 playing out right before our eyes. God gave them up. God gave them up. God gave them up. That’s what it says. It used that phrase THREE TIMES in those verses.
This is why it’s called the abandonment wrath. God just abandons you to run after what you actually want. If you reject a Creator, God will abandon you to worship creation. If you reject God’s plan for sexuality, God will abandon you to go after sexual perversion. If you reject the Lordship of God, God will abandon you to believe the nonsense idea that everything came from nothing.
It pollutes your own body. Notice it says they receive in themselves the due penalty for their error. I’ve noticed the past couple years that every time we have a pride month in June, there’s an outbreak of Monkeypox in July. You start seeing these headlines about a rise in Monkeypox cases. Well, if you look up how Monkeypox is spread, you might recognize the correlation there.
And when you reject the truth, God gives you over to believe lies. To a depraved mind and the dishonoring of your body.
That’s God’s abandonment wrath. As I said last time, when we think of God’s wrath, we often think of hell and fire and brimstone and stuff like that. But sometimes God’s wrath is just giving us what we want, even when we’re wanting evil.
So the embrace of gender confusion and sexual perversion in our society today is not just an invitation to God’s wrath. It’s a sign that we’re already under it.
Sometimes God’s wrath looks like Sodom and Gomorrah. Sometimes God’s wrath looks like what happened to Sodom and Gomorrah. Sometimes God’s wrath looks like outbreak of sickness and disease. Sometimes God’s wrath looks like monkeypox.
Sometimes God’s wrath is giving you exactly what you wanted, even if it would be something that’s very very bad for you.

Closing
So is the God of this World in II Corinthians 4 talking about God or Satan? What makes this so interesting- and weird- is that there is a good scriptural argument either way. There are wonderful, Godly people on both sides of the debate. And you can take what I said and come to whatever conclusion you want to on that question. Either way, I think the application is pretty clear: Don’t let anything come between you and God. Because when you do, you open yourself up to being deceived.
So our prayer needs to be: God, I want you, regardless of what that means for my life and my desires and my wants. I would give up everything else in this world to follow you. Lead me into all truth and all righteousness. And please give me a wake-up call if I ever start to desire things that are bad for me or if I ever start to believe what is false.
And if you think that kind of prayer sounds weird, I hope you’re a little more weird today, too. Thanks for listening, God bless you for sticking around until the end, and we’ll see you next time on Weird Stuff in the Bible.