September 1, 2025 • 42 mins
In this episode of Christian Book Blurb, host Matt McChlery speaks with author Jared Brock about his book 'A Devil Named Lucifer.' They explore the misconceptions surrounding the devil, the nature of evil, and the importance of free will in understanding sin. Brock emphasizes the need to strip away cultural assumptions about the devil and focus on biblical truths. The conversation also delves into the concept of hell, Satan's strategies, and the author's future projects, including a focus on Christian economics.
Links
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Visit Matt McChlery's website mattmcchlery.com
Visit Jared Brock's website jaredabrock.com
With thanks to this episode's sponsors 'The Garlic Queen' by Wendy Lord
Takeaways
- The book aims to myth bust the common misconceptions about the devil.
- The devil is a minor character in the grand narrative of God's story.
- Evil is a result of human free will, not solely the devil's influence.
- Cultural images of the devil are largely post-biblical and not scripturally based.
- The lake of fire was created for the devil, not for humans.
- Satan's appearances in the Bible are infrequent and often misinterpreted.
- Free will is essential for genuine love and obedience to God.
- Temptation can be seen as an opportunity for spiritual growth.
- Avoiding temptation is a practical strategy for Christians.
- Brock's future work focuses on Christian economics and its implications for society.
Sound Bites
"The devil is a tiny part of God's big story." "The devil cannot make you do anything." "Avoid temptation as much as possible."
Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Christian Book Blurb 00:26 Exploring the Book: A Devil Named Lucifer 02:44 Myth Busting the Devil 05:41 Cultural Assumptions and Images of the Devil 08:25 The Nature of Evil and Free Will 10:50 Understanding Hell and Its Concepts 18:46 Satan's Strategies and Temptations 27:08 Getting to Know the Author: Jared Brock 36:06 Future Projects and Christian Economics
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
This is Christian Book Blurb brought to you by author and songwriter Matt McChlery Get abehind-the-scenes glimpse into the lives of some of your favourite Christian authors, hear
about their books and faith.
Also, why not check out my website, mattmccleary.com?
This episode is sponsored by the Christian fiction novella Garlic Queen by Wendy Lord.
(00:24):
Do go and check it out on wendylordbooks.com now.
Hello and welcome to this episode of the Christian Book Blurb podcast, where we like toencourage you and your discipleship one book at a time.
Now I've got another great Christian author on the show with me today.
I'm going to be speaking with Jared Brock all about his book called A Devil Named Lucifer.
(00:49):
So hi, Jared.
Welcome to the show.
Hi Matt, thanks for having me.
And this is a Christian broadcast, this is a Christian show, so why write a book about thedevil?
Well, I am a big fan of books.
I've written six of them.
(01:10):
Some bunches around the shelf behind me here.
And my previous book was called A God Named Josh.
It's a myth buster on the life of Jesus, starting with the fact that his name is notJesus.
And I wanted to do a follow up on the devil to myth bust the devil.
There's this huge idea in Christian culture, ah in some circles that
(01:32):
you know, Jesus and the devil are like locked in an arm wrestling competition.
Who's gonna win?
Who's gonna win?
And it's not like that at all.
That's actually a Persian Zoroastrian myth that um it's not true.
The devil is a tiny part of God's big story and everything that the devil is doing, God isultimately using to advance his agenda, which is the invading kingdom of God.
(01:58):
So I'm sure we'll get into all of that, but.
Yeah, myth busting the devil starting with the fact that his name is not loose.
Yeah, and it was a very interesting book.
Now, I just want to say straight out because some listeners um might be curious aboutthis.
So, yeah, your book is called A Devil Named Lucifer, but you even say this in the bookitself.
I think it's near the end and you sort of say, well, hopefully you figured out by now thatthis book is a lot more about God than it actually is about the devil.
(02:27):
and it is, I mean, I've read it and it's there's so much in there.
about God, and you're of still trying to piece the bits about the devil together.
But that's, it's been a really helpful book for me because um the Bible kind of mentionsSatan in a few places, and you kind of have to do like a dot to dot, you know, like one of
(02:52):
those pictures where you've got to kind of join the dots of this verse here, and thenthere's some other verse somewhere else, then you've got to jump forward and find another
verse here, and
You get a kind of sense of the devil or Satan, I suppose, but it's not like turned to oneverse and it's all spelt out for you.
(03:12):
Here it is.
This is what happens.
This is who he is.
It's all kind of dotted all over.
So your book kind of brought all that together.
Did you find that in the writing of it, that it was a lot of kind of little bits andpieces that you had to kind of somehow fit like a jigsaw?
Yes, very much.
So this is kind of what I do.
(03:32):
So I wrote a book a few years ago on a guy named Josiah Henson.
He was a slave who escaped from America to Canada before the Civil War.
that was, you know, looking at 200 year old newspaper clippings and traveling 5,000 milesto go to different plantations and reading dozens of different books and finding
(03:55):
uh little pieces here and there meeting up with descendants and you know and then pullingit all together.
It's the same with a God named Josh.
You know like what were Jesus's politics?
It isn't like John chapter 4, Jesus's politics.
Matthew chapter 8, Jesus's Jewishness.
You know uh Luke chapter 57, uh Jesus's economics.
(04:18):
It's not like that.
You got to piece it all together.
So yeah for a devil named Lucifer I definitely had to do that.
I would
say more so than my other books because he is so infrequently mentioned in the Bible.
There's very few appearances, definitive appearances of the devil in the Bible.
And another thing I appreciate about the book as well is you've tried to keep it asbiblically accurate as possible.
(04:43):
mean, with a book like this, The Temptation, what's something to talk about with this kindof a book?
The Temptation might have been to go, well, there's this whole kind of sort of demonologyand all this kind of stuff that you can draw in from other places.
And there's other books that kind of draw in other
beliefs and systems and stuff.
(05:05):
You could have delved into some of that, but you didn't.
You kind of stuck pretty much to the canon of scripture and what it says.
oh Thank you for saying that.
that's absolutely that was my intention.
I wanted to strip off the cultural baggage for certain um I really wanted to get down towhat does the Bible actually say there is there are an unbelievable number of books out
(05:29):
there on the Nephilim that will try to convince you that Demons had sex with women andthey created these like Satan babies like no not in the Bible um there are books that will
tell you that Jezebel is a real demon that she
It's like, no, the Bible does not say that.
um You know, people will tell you that the devil has horns and he's got fiery sulfurbreath and you know, he's all these different things.
(05:54):
We could talk about Azalel, Belial, Beelzebub, Legion, Mammon, all these demons that justaren't on and on and on.
It's just not biblical.
So I really wanted to strip it back to like, what can we actually know just from scriptureand let's not stray outside the lines of those, even though it's really fun and creative
to do so.
It's not biblical, it's not faithful to the Bible.
(06:15):
And speaking of cultural assumptions, mean, even Christians who want to try and stick asfaithfully to what the Bible actually says, um even when we come to scripture, we come to
it, don't we, with our own sort of preconceived ideas sometimes, our own kind of image ofthings, and especially, I think, of Satan or the devil, um we hear that name and
(06:43):
know, something comes to mind, whether we've watched a movie or whether we've read somesort of comic book or even like TV adverts, they sometimes use sort of images around sort
of Satan and that kind of thing with pitchforks and pointy tails and sort of horns out thehead.
you know, can you tell us more about that?
(07:04):
Because your book does go into quite some detail about where some of these ideas orcultural images come from.
Yeah, so basically everything that we picture in our heads when we think of the devil justis post biblical.
The horns are Dionysus, Isis or Baal.
The red eyes are from a medieval manuscript called the Codex Gigas.
(07:27):
The mustache and the goatee is the god Pan.
The fiery sulfur breath, Revelation 12.15 says he spews water, which is quite the mindrender.
uh Capentites is from a Faust play.
The wings are from Dante's Inferno.
The pitchfork is the Roman god of war, Mars, or the Roman god of the underworld, The redskin is the Egyptian god Set.
(07:52):
We don't have a single artistic impression of the devil prior to the sixth century.
They believe the first one, it's at a church in Ravenna and the devil is blue in thatimage.
But even that, you can't say the devil's blue either.
So the reality is the devil is spirit and he disguises himself as an angel of light.
He presents as a radiant messenger.
(08:13):
He doesn't have a physical body.
He is a spirit and he's the father of lies.
So whatever we think he looks like is just, we need to chuck that image out to start.
He's gonna look the opposite of that.
He's gonna look like fool's gold.
um He's gonna look like sex without commitment and knowledge without wisdom and wealthwithout contribution, tolerance without discernment.
(08:36):
Everything that glitters is not gold and he's presenting himself like a radiant messenger.
It, and this makes sense.
Like if I wanted to, like, if I wanted to attract Matt McChlery into my scheme, would Itry to scare him?
Would I try to terrorize him?
Would I try to disgust him?
Would I try to just make him just quake in his boots?
No, I would try to tempt him, seduce him.
(08:57):
I try to present things that are beautiful and attractive and alluring.
That's what's going to draw him in.
And so why would the devil, why would he think that scaring the bejesus out of people iswhat's going to draw them to him?
just isn't, it's nonsense.
Yeah.
And, and you just saying that brought to mind some, some of the, representations we getquite a lot in sort of TV and film these days.
(09:23):
and it may not necessarily be of the devil or Satan himself, although sometimes he isdefinitely a part, like a character in that story.
Um, but quite often it's this kind of, just the sort of sense or this force of evil.
That's sort of pervading everything.
And even the good guys in the story, you know, are really struggling to overcome thisseemingly sort of massively huge kind of evilness.
(09:51):
And you kind of thinking, goodness, will the good guys actually, actually make it out?
You know, it might not happen, but something that you said, the book, which I really likedis this, this, this, this idea we have of this equal fight where
sort of God or good and Satan or evil are battling it out sort of on an even um platformor an even scale um just isn't the case.
(10:23):
What more can you tell us about that?
Well, it's just it is a myth that the devil is the creator of all evil, that he's thesource of evil, that he's the personification of evil.
It's just not true.
Evil is rebellion against the word, will and way of God.
That's the word for sin is ha-martia, to miss the mark.
(10:45):
Anything that misses the mark of God's perfection is sin, is evil.
And so the devil is not the creator of that.
He's not the embodiment of that.
He's not the
Progenitor of all evil.
I am, you are.
Free will spirits that live in rebellion against the word, and way of God are the creatorsof evil.
(11:06):
And so is the devil evil?
Yes, absolutely.
But so am I.
If the devil didn't exist, if the demonic realm ceased to exist, if the devil was lockedup for a thousand years, evil would still prevail.
Why?
because there's eight billion human free will spirits living in rebellion against God.
And so there would still be child murder.
(11:28):
There would still be rape.
There would still be genocide and war.
There would still be planetary destruction because we are rebelling against God.
Another big myth is this idea of like the devil made me do it.
The devil cannot make you do anything.
If the devil could genuinely make you pull a trigger and kill someone and then Godpunishes a human for murdering someone,
(11:49):
then that means he is not a good judge and he is not God.
It's actually a heresy to say that the devil made you do it.
The devil can tempt you, he can test you, he can try to convince you to believe a lie thatyou should shoot that person or whatever, but he cannot physically make you pull the
trigger.
You, as a free will spirit, choose to pull the trigger.
And so to me, that's like, okay, if the devil isn't evil itself, that I actually have someresponsibility in this, then.
(12:17):
Okay, that really changes the conversation.
And mentioning free will, um you deal with free will as well in the book.
So why does God give us free will?
What's the point of free will and how does that all fit in with all of this?
No, normally we do the warm-up questions like his name isn't Lucifer Devil or Satan, butwe're hopping straight into
(12:38):
Let's uh
Yes, like, mean, like, let's, let's just start with the fact that like, if there is noGod, there is no evil, right?
If all there is, is quirks and quirks and electrons and neutrons and protons and stringtheory and physics, then murder is not real.
It doesn't really, right?
If, if you go out and you kill, if you wipe out a school of let's say 500 children, whathave you actually done?
(13:04):
Well, economically you've decreased demand for goods.
So you've helped inflation rates.
So that's kind of good.
It's good economically.
you, you've created 500 less people to demand resources.
So that's good for the planet.
And you just rearranged atoms.
You didn't like people don't matter.
They're just nutrients.
It doesn't matter.
(13:25):
like, you could make arguments that that mass murder is actually like, is actually likenet scientifically good.
Like there's a whole like pan humanist thinking that the world will be better when humansare wiped out, you know, whether it's.
naturally or by AI, the world will be in a better shape without us.
Like without a God, there is no evil.
(13:47):
You're just rearranging molecules.
So let's assume that there is a God and that missing his will is the definition of evil.
Once we have that understanding, then we can say, okay, so why does evil exist?
Why does rebellion exist?
And that is because God gave us free will.
Well, why did God give us free will?
(14:09):
If you do the spiritual math, free will is a base element of love.
Free will is the non-negotiable prerequisite for the possibility of love to exist.
If my wife had a button on her shoulder that every time I pushed it said, I love you,Jared, I love you, Jared, that's not real love.
It's only love if she has the opportunity to choose and say yes or to reject me.
(14:32):
There has to be the ability for her to refuse to choose to love me.
So God gave us free will because he didn't want slaves.
He wanted people to choose to love him.
so if, know, the reason evil exists is it was the only way to open the door to free willof us choosing to love and obey God.
(14:52):
So God had to risk all of our rebellion in order to have, to give us free will, whichmeans God's love must be the most important thing in the universe, that he was willing to
roll the dice on.
you know, child sex slavery and human trafficking and genocide and all this stuff.
But here's the thing, and teenagers have such a good intuitive grasp of this, so okay,picture the universe.
(15:17):
There's this idea of the multiverse, the idea that like, you know, if Matt turns left,there's one universe.
If Matt turns right, there's another universe.
What if God in his sovereignty has seen every possible version of what could be, whetherwe choose rebellion or obedience?
any given decision, all eight billion of us for all of human history, what if God has seenevery single version of that, and every single version of that, he has come up with a plan
(15:48):
to restore and redeem all things unto himself?
That is how I've found a way to reconcile the idea of like God's sovereignty andultimately being in control and us having free will, is that God does give us.
limited free will.
You I can't jump a thousand feet in the air and I can't live forever.
I don't have ultimate free will.
just physics still exists.
um God also has a free will and for whatever reason he said, I'm going to give thesepeople limited free will to choose to love or reject me.
(16:15):
And when they choose rejection in different areas of their life, I'm going to meet themthere with a plan to redeem and restore.
That to me is like, my goodness, God, you are so brilliant, so loving, so patient with us.
And the moral of story is
Evil exists because God wants more love and obedience to exist.
And he will eventually eradicate all evil, all rebellion.
(16:39):
We will live in obedience to God.
Every knee will bow.
Every tongue will confess that Jesus is Lord and the kingdom will reign in its fullness.
And that will be a very, very good day.
And until then, we just have to put up with this huge amount of suffering that is causedby free will rebellion.
You mention in your book, A Devil Named Lucifer, that Satan isn't mentioned in the Biblevery much.
(17:03):
We've kind of alluded to it with the of the dot-to-dot picture earlier.
But what can you tell us about how many times Satan is mentioned in the Bible and whatwords he actually speaks and all that kind of thing?
Mm-hmm.
Okay, so let's let's back up all the way to Lucifer.
So the book is called the Devil Name Lucifer.
That's not that's not because that's his name.
(17:23):
That's just because that's what people call him.
The word Lucifer does not appear in the original Hebrew or Greek Bible.
It doesn't exist.
He is not called Lucifer, full stop period, end of.
But a couple hundred years later, there's a Latin translation.
They use the word Lucifer several times in it, mostly to translate words like day star ormorning star.
A Lucifer
(17:44):
is a light bearer or a light bringer.
The first match ever created was called a Lucifer.
And there's three different uh beings, things in scripture that are described as lightbearers, light bringers.
Jesus is described as a Lucifer, Christians are described as Lucifers, and creation isdescribed as uh Lucifer.
(18:04):
But the devil is never described as a light bearer.
He is not a light bringer.
He disguises himself as a light bearer.
He disguises himself as an angel of light, but he is not a Lucifer.
So that's Lucifer.
His name is also not devil or Satan.
Just like I wrote with a God named Josh, Jesus's name was not Jesus.
That's just the English name.
(18:25):
His name was Yehoshua in Hebrew.
The devil's name or Satan's name, the two words that we're translating there in Hebrew andGreek are hasatan and diabolos.
I think we need to get rid of.
devil and Satan from our English Bibles because we have so much silly pictures of himsitting on our shoulder, all that baggage.
(18:46):
We should ditch those and call him by the Hebrew and Greek word that the original readerswould have heard and understood.
So we'd have the same emotional and mental hit.
And those words are accuser, adversary.
That's who he is and that's what he does.
He accuses adversarially.
And this being doesn't show up that much in the Bible.
(19:08):
There's lots of times in the Bible where someone or something is called the Satan or thedevil.
So for instance, the first Satan in the Bible is King David.
He comes out, they're worried that he's gonna come out as a Satan against them, as anadversary against them.
So if you actually look at capital S, know the Satan, so not the Satan, the devil, butactual Satan as a name, he only makes a definitive appearance on three unique occasions in
(19:36):
the Old Testament.
And as the devil three unique occasions in the new Testament, the dot, Bible talks aboutdonkeys more than it talks about the devil.
There's more stories in the Bible about olive oil than there is about Satan.
Satan actually ranks between cheese and bread for number of you can make a Satan sandwichout of how few times he's in the Bible.
And he barely speaks.
Like if you do the math, he speaks around 200 words in English translations, um, which it,when you subtract the fact that almost half of what he says is him either quoting or
(20:05):
misquoting scripture.
It's not even close to 1 % of the, he's an absolute rounding error in the Bible.
barely, he's barely on the page.
So yeah, he's not this looming figure that people think at first glance.
Yeah, I found that really interesting.
um Yeah, and those sort of the the word root origins and things um Yeah, reallyinteresting You also deal with the topic of hell now I Was reading the book thinking okay.
(20:35):
Okay, you know, I get it I understand the root origins and all this kind of thing but inthe back of my mind I kept thinking hmm.
What's Jared going to do with hell?
What's he going to say about hell, you know?
because uh that can be quite a hot topic in Christian circles.
So what can you tell us about hell?
(20:58):
P.S.
I love how you said hell is a hot topic and you genuinely didn't even know.
So again, I always want to go back to scripture and I don't want, I can't confidently sayA, B or C if I can't show it to people from the word of God, right?
I'm just reporting what I see people.
(21:20):
And so there's like five different, five or six different.
So there's hell, there's sheol, there's Tartarus, which is like, whoa, how did a Greekmyth sneak its way into the Bible?
What's going on there?
There's the abyss, there's the lake of fire.
(21:40):
So there's a number of terms and like, is which.
and Hades, that's boom, six, I remembered it, wow.
And how are they related?
Are some of them the same?
If I recall correctly, don't speak, I don't even talk about this very much.
It doesn't really come up in interviews.
And of course I wrote this book almost two years ago now, but it's, it, there is thissense that like hell, shale, the abyss, they're kind of all the same.
(22:08):
They're like the same, they're, they're like different words for the same kind of concept.
The lake of fire seems to be separate from that because it says that
the hell is going to be like thrown into the lake of fire.
So, okay, that seems like it's a separate kind of entity.
The lake of fire, the Bible's very clear, was not created for humans.
(22:28):
It said the lake of fire, which was created for the devil and the antichrist, that that'swhat it was for.
But if other free will entities are going to live in rebellion against the word, well, inthe way of God, they are going to live in separation from God for eternity.
the lake of fire wasn't originally meant for any human.
beings because we were supposed to be in communion with God.
(22:50):
But yeah, there's these different terms.
em Hell and Sheol, the abyss, they're quite Old Testament-y and they seem almost like aholding place for the end times.
But if there's no time, once you're dead, does that mean it's just instant?
(23:12):
Like the second you die, is it just over because you're outside of time now?
as physical human beings, can't understand being outside of the temporal plane.
We don't know.
We just don't know.
Yeah.
So it's not, it's not a case of hell doesn't exist.
Hell exists, it's sure of what that comes up with the Bible isn't particularly clear.
(23:36):
Yeah.
Okay.
Good.
Cool.
So you talk about some of the strategies Satan uses against um Christians.
um Is it something like an epic battle, like from Lord of the Rings going on or, or
Is it demon possession you see in scary movies or is it something else?
(23:58):
What's like his favorite go-to way of sort of, I don't know, attacking Christians orsomething like
Yeah, well, just in regards to the exorcism thing really quick.
So obviously movies are about drama and action and getting your heart racing.
It's important to remember that Jesus is an exorcist.
(24:20):
He's constantly casting out unclean spirits.
That's weird, Jesus the exorcist, right?
That seems like a strange thing.
And I have no doubt that the demonic realm was never more active in human history thanwhen Jesus was on the planet.
Think about if...
like Winston Churchill had to parachute it into Germany, how the Nazis would have justlike, gone absolutely crazy trying to find them, right?
(24:42):
Or Eisenhower, like they would have gone nuts.
Like I imagine that there's never been more demonic activity to that point in time thanwhen Jesus was actually on the planet.
And then of course they think they have victory when they nail him to the cross and thenhe comes back and they're like, shoot, now we're back to square one.
And I imagine that the next largest.
moment of demonic activity will be this great tribulation, knowing that the end is rightaround the corner and that it's absolute white boat for the forces of darkness.
(25:10):
So Jesus's exorcisms are very drama free.
There's no head spinning in circles.
There's no climbing off the walls.
There's no bleeding from the eyeballs or any of this nonsense.
It's typically like whispers.
It's Jesus telling demons to stop telling the truth.
Cause they're always like, you're the son of God.
And he's like, be quiet, go away.
And then, right?
(25:30):
And then the people who he exercises, he mostly tells them, don't tell anyone, just likego back to your life.
Like he doesn't really, he doesn't say like, hey, tweet this, hey, make a TikTok aboutthis.
He's like very low key.
You know, it's drama free.
And my best friend runs a demonic deliverance ministry and it's very similar.
(25:52):
He's like, I get preternaturally calm in these moments.
They obey at the name of Jesus.
There's just, there's no drama that we see in films.
And that seems to me like the most Christ-like way to do an exorcism.
Anyways, what was your question, Matt?
It had nothing to do with exorcism.
It was about um the strategy that Satan uses, the main way.
(26:18):
Yeah.
So picture your life like a house and you look out the window and you see something thatlooks alluring.
It's a temptation.
um The devil's strategy seems to be temptation, fixation, obsession, possession.
So his goal is to build a stronghold in your house and to build a stronghold, he needs toget a foothold.
(26:43):
He needs you to crack that door open.
you're looking out.
you know, through your eyes, you see through the window of your heart, you see thistemptation, you begin to fixate on it, you begin to obsess with it, and then you open the
door, and the devil just puts a foot in that door, and then he just puts in a ratchet andratchets that door wide open.
Once he's inside, he just wants to start laying concrete and build a pillbox, just like abunker in your life.
(27:05):
If you are a Christian, the devil can never own you, he can never possess you, can nevercontrol you, you do not belong to him, you legally belong.
to Christ, you you are bought at a price if you are a Christian.
um But it doesn't mean he can't absolutely try to ruin your life, blow off your leg,destroy your marriage, wreck your relationship with your kids, wreck your career, wreck
(27:26):
your calling, wreck your ministry.
He can absolutely try to devastate you.
um So I think this is why Jesus prays, you know, lead us not into temptation.
Like, God, please help me to stay so far away from temptation.
I don't wanna fixate, I don't wanna obsess.
because I don't want to have a foothold that becomes a stronghold.
So here's some examples of footholds versus strongholds.
(27:47):
So like self-will can become rebellion, anger, violence, hatred, murder, distraction, idolworship, lust, adultery, fear, paralysis.
These are, you know, a false teaching apostasy.
These are different kinds of footholds that can become strongholds.
The Christian response, the Bible says resist the devil and he will flee.
(28:10):
we can see every temptation as a servant of God.
We can thank God for allowing it because it's an opportunity for victory.
I heard a quote somewhere that said something like, uh you absorb the strength of everytemptation you overcome.
Now that's not like biblical, it's just like a good, it's a good image.
I think a really smart initial strategy though is just to avoid temptation as much aspossible.
(28:32):
There's these stories told that.
that, you know, so-called the passengers on the Titanic when it hit the iceberg, they liketook ice chunks and put it in their cocktails and champagne or whatever.
You don't want to get so close to the iceberg that it rips out the underside of your life.
You want to steer so clear.
So here's a simple example.
I have never seen pornography on a cell phone because I don't own a cell phone.
(28:53):
I don't have a mobile device.
um If you are addicted to ice cream, ah well, if the nearest ice cream shop is an houraway or you're addicted to shopping,
and you don't have Amazon Prime or you don't live near a mall, you can avoid, I wouldargue, the vast majority of temptations in life can be avoided by removing yourself from
(29:15):
the vicinity of those temptations.
And then for the rest that do come, really see those as a servant of God and anopportunity for victory.
That's really helpful, Jared.
Thank you.
We'll be back after these.
I'm chatting some more with Jared Brock about his life and his fate.
So join us after these.
Samantha had been raised by Bama, her grandmother, until her 12th birthday, when hermother suddenly showed up to claim her.
(29:43):
So began a strange new life for Sam.
Thousands of miles from home and cut off from her friends, her Bama and from everythingfamiliar.
Bama finds a way to stay connected while Sam learns to see the beauty, the sunlight behindthe fog that clouds her adolescence.
Now, almost two decades later,
(30:04):
Her grandmother has passed away and Sam must figure out how to manage what remains ofBama's life and farm business, Royalty Garlic.
She needs to find a way to get rid of possessions while preserving their memories.
She must say a final goodbye, honouring the amazing woman she loved.
This episode of Christian Book Blurb is sponsored by the Christian fiction novella GarlicQueen by Wendy Lord.
(30:31):
And it's available now from Wendy's website, wendylordbooks.com.
Do go and buy yourself a copy today.
If you enjoy listening to this podcast, you can help keep it on the web.
All you've got to do is buy me a coffee.
Head over to buymeacoffee.com slash Matt McChlery to make a donation.
(30:53):
There is a link in this episode's show notes.
So go on, buy me a coffee today and help this podcast to keep supporting Christian booksand authors.
Hi, welcome back to the Christian Book Blurb.
I'm chatting with author Jared Brock all about his book, A Devil Named Lucifer.
(31:13):
Now, Jared, at this point in the show, we like to get to know the author a little bitbetter.
So let's...
I saw this in your notes and I was very excited and I was also kind of nervous.
was like, I don't know if I've done this before.
is a juicy.
it's great.
Some listeners can get in touch and say, this is our favorite bit.
(31:34):
what do do for fun?
What, what, what, what, you know, excites.
Okay.
Well, so I have a three year old boy and a one year old boy.
So I have endless amounts of reading and wrestling and going to the park right now.
It's Blackberry season here in England.
So we are picking Blackberries once, if not twice every single day.
(31:55):
um For fun, I like to read a lot.
um I'm currently reading a uh book on the Clapham sect, which was
William Whippleforce's Friends Circle, just this group of epic Christians in the late1700s, early 1800s, who essentially abolished slavery and reformed British manners.
(32:15):
They like created the Victorian era basically, probably, you know, the last great era ofthe UK.
This small group of friends was just astounding at the work they did.
So yeah.
um
I love to read.
I'm big into film.
I'm also a filmmaker.
I've directed four or five documentaries.
(32:36):
name of one of them.
We can go and check it out.
Yes, actually, are ones called Red Light, Green Light, it's on human trafficking.
Over 18 is on teenage addiction to pornography.
That's for parents.
Redeem Uncle Tom, narrated by Danny Glover, is about this amazing Christian slave.
Those are all available to watch for free on my website, JaredRock.com.
(32:59):
I love film.
I love reading.
love hanging out with my boys.
Don't get to do it much in the UK because of the weather, but I love basketball andtennis.
Any sunny day you will find us at the beach.
will drive to the ocean and just read on the beach.
But 30 minutes.
that's not too bad.
And what sort of beach is it?
(33:20):
it like a stony beach or lovely lush sands of palm trees?
mean, let's take it a bit far knowing that you in the UK, but.
Beach kind of believe it or not we live in the northeast of England and we are half anhour from a thick sandy beach that even has some even has some manks palm trees nearby so
(33:40):
I thought it was making.
It's called Sand Haven and even the king, think it was King George, visited it and said itwas the nicest beach he'd ever been to.
So there we go.
There you go.
Great.
got a beach stamped with a prove of right.
Great.
Wonderful.
Any favorite things to eat?
(34:04):
Yeah, so I do all the cooking in our home.
My wife is my sous chef, but I do the cooking.
um We're a pretty carnivore family.
My son, when he was learning to talk, his first phrase was, more beef, which I thought waspretty fabulous.
I'm known for a couple of legendary items.
One is called a burrito suizo, which is a Swiss burrito.
(34:26):
So you get a giant 18-inch tortilla shell.
You fill it with meat and rice and beans.
You then wrap it up and you put the salsa on the outside.
You get to do a proper baptism, covered in cheese, bake it in the oven and fork and knifeit like the queen, just very posh.
So I do that.
I also am known for doing, you know, uh one pound burgers with grilled cheese buns.
(34:50):
So cheese toasties has the buns.
Butter chicken from scratch.
like, yeah, those would be some of my favorite.
Yeah, wonderful, Tea or coffee?
So I actually don't caffeinate.
got my DNA tested a few years ago and it was like, you do not drink caffeine.
Your body process it so quickly that it's rendered useless.
(35:12):
So yeah, I'm not a tea or coffee person.
My wife drinks three teas a day because she's a good Brit and I call it weed water.
It is irrelevant to me.
uh
that's fascinating.
Chocolate or sweets?
oh So I read that one and I was like, Matt, those are the same thing.
Chocolate is sweet, but to Brits it's different.
(35:34):
Yes, it's sweet.
but you know, candy, candy.
Yeah, so I was allergic to chocolate growing up, so I'm to go with candy on this one.
oh
All right.
Oh, interesting.
And you've already mentioned your family.
Do you have another job?
Do you do something else other than writing and making films or is that where you kind offocus most of your
Yeah, so I write books and I make documentaries currently uh editing a documentary on theglobal housing crisis.
(36:02):
We think it's probably going to be our biggest film ever because landlords and bankers aredestroying housing and we need to stop it.
They will not stop until they are stopped and we are enslaving the next generation tobanks and landlords and I have a huge problem with that.
The Bible says it was for freedom that crisis set us free and
(36:22):
Landlording is a form of interest.
It's profit on lending, which the Bible is very against.
so, uh yeah, we're on a war path with that film to uh try.
We've gotten some laws changed in Canada with our previous films.
And uh this is the kind of thing where we'd love to start an international conversation oncompletely reforming how we look at sheltering human beings.
(36:45):
Sounds very interesting.
Moving on to a slightly more spiritual personal question.
What is the Holy Spirit doing in your life at the moment?
so I'm a dad of young kids.
So it's revealing all my problems.
(37:08):
You just, you see your, you see your three year old son do something and you're like,shoot, that's me.
That's me.
This is do it.
Oh no.
So yeah, it's, it's, it's patients.
It's, it's working on my patients, working on my anger, working on those are the big tworight now.
I think I'm just.
trying to be more kind and gentle.
(37:29):
patient.
Bless you.
I'm the father of three.
A bit further along, but I can completely identify.
Yeah, for sure.
uh Sometimes you need, I don't know if you're at this point yet, but I feel like someoneneeds to buy me like a whistle and like a referee's uniform.
(37:54):
Yeah.
Because that seems to be that the main thing I'm doing at the minute is
Grafana.
referee breaking up the arguments anyway.
Nevermind.
It's all, it all comes and goes.
It's all the part of the fun of
To be clear, I love being a dad.
We waited 13 years to have kids because we couldn't afford it.
(38:14):
We were really housing insecure.
My only regret in life is not having kids way sooner.
has been the joy.
People did not sell it well.
They woefully undersold how happy being a dad makes a man.
(38:34):
It's wild.
that's great.
have you got anything coming up?
So what you've told us, what you're working on, let's talk books because you've writtenseveral.
Um, this is just one of the many.
So I am assuming you've got another iron in the fire or some thoughts sort of meandering,or you might even be starting to write something.
(38:58):
Who knows what's, what's coming up in the future.
Yes.
So we have now finished shooting a free 10 hour video course for Christians on Christianeconomics.
ah And I'm currently editing the book as well.
So the book is done and I'm editing it.
(39:19):
Christians, I've sat through almost 2000 church sermons in my lifetime, 40 years inchurch, and I've never heard a sermon on Christian economics.
You'll occasionally hear
a very dodgy radio guru style talk on personal finance, but you'll almost never hear ateaching on Christian economics.
(39:44):
And economics is upstream of politics, culture, war, climate change, you name the issue.
Economics is upstream of essentially everything except the human heart.
And Christians are woefully under resourced when it comes to
knowing about Christian economics, what does the word will and way of Jesus say about howwe allocate resources?
(40:08):
And so I've spent the last five years on this and it's definitely the biggest projectever.
This is my like hard calling, it's my burden.
It's like, it's the thing I care about most in life.
And so this has been the culmination of five years of work.
So that course is gonna be totally free.
God willing, it'll come out some point in the fall, as well as the book.
um Hopefully the book will be out by Christmas, but yeah, Christian economics is.
(40:31):
is what I think I'll probably spend the rest of my life.
There's 2.63 billion Christians and my goal is to just teach them all Christian economics.
So just a little, yeah.
That's just a small way.
Yeah.
Where can we find, well, you've already mentioned your website, but let's mention itagain.
Um, where can people find out more about you, your books, your films, all that sort of.
(40:53):
JaredBrock.com, anyone can watch all my films for free.
You can also download my first book, A Year of Living Prayerfully for free there as well.
And you can also get free sample chapters of all the other books, watch the book trailers.
So you can get the first couple chapters of A God Named Josh and A Devil Named Lucifer andall my books there.
(41:14):
Everything's at JaredBrock.com.
That's great.
Thank you, Judd.
It's been wonderful speaking with you and it's been a joy having you on the show.
Thanks so much.
Thank you so much to the Christian Novella Garlic Queen by Wendy Lord, who sponsoredtoday's episode.
Do go and check it out now on wendylordbooks.com.
(41:36):
And thank you as well for listening to this episode of the Christian Book Blur podcast.
Don't forget that this podcast comes out twice a month on the 1st and on the 15th, so itwon't be long.
before I'm back again speaking to another Christian author all about their books and theirlife and their faith to help you grow in your discipleship one book at a time.
So I do look forward to seeing you again then.
(41:57):
Thanks so much.
Goodbye.
Thanks for listening to Christian Book Blurb with your host, Matt McChlery.
Do give it a like, give it a share and let your friends know all about it.
We do hope to see you again soon on another Christian Book Blurb.
This is Christian Book Blurb brought to you by author and songwriter Matt McChlery Get abehind-the-scenes glimpse into the lives of some of your favourite Christian authors, hear
about their books and faith.
Also, why not check out my website, mattmccleary.com?
This episode is sponsored by the Christian fiction novella Garlic Queen by Wendy Lord.
(00:24):
Do go and check it out on wendylordbooks.com now.
Hello and welcome to this episode of the Christian Book Blurb podcast, where we like toencourage you and your discipleship one book at a time.
Now I've got another great Christian author on the show with me today.
I'm going to be speaking with Jared Brock all about his book called A Devil Named Lucifer.
(00:49):
So hi, Jared.
Welcome to the show.
Hi Matt, thanks for having me.
And this is a Christian broadcast, this is a Christian show, so why write a book about thedevil?
Well, I am a big fan of books.
I've written six of them.
(01:10):
Some bunches around the shelf behind me here.
And my previous book was called A God Named Josh.
It's a myth buster on the life of Jesus, starting with the fact that his name is notJesus.
And I wanted to do a follow up on the devil to myth bust the devil.
There's this huge idea in Christian culture, ah in some circles that
(01:32):
you know, Jesus and the devil are like locked in an arm wrestling competition.
Who's gonna win?
Who's gonna win?
And it's not like that at all.
That's actually a Persian Zoroastrian myth that um it's not true.
The devil is a tiny part of God's big story and everything that the devil is doing, God isultimately using to advance his agenda, which is the invading kingdom of God.
(01:58):
So I'm sure we'll get into all of that, but.
Yeah, myth busting the devil starting with the fact that his name is not loose.
Yeah, and it was a very interesting book.
Now, I just want to say straight out because some listeners um might be curious aboutthis.
So, yeah, your book is called A Devil Named Lucifer, but you even say this in the bookitself.
I think it's near the end and you sort of say, well, hopefully you figured out by now thatthis book is a lot more about God than it actually is about the devil.
(02:27):
and it is, I mean, I've read it and it's there's so much in there.
about God, and you're of still trying to piece the bits about the devil together.
But that's, it's been a really helpful book for me because um the Bible kind of mentionsSatan in a few places, and you kind of have to do like a dot to dot, you know, like one of
(02:52):
those pictures where you've got to kind of join the dots of this verse here, and thenthere's some other verse somewhere else, then you've got to jump forward and find another
verse here, and
You get a kind of sense of the devil or Satan, I suppose, but it's not like turned to oneverse and it's all spelt out for you.
(03:12):
Here it is.
This is what happens.
This is who he is.
It's all kind of dotted all over.
So your book kind of brought all that together.
Did you find that in the writing of it, that it was a lot of kind of little bits andpieces that you had to kind of somehow fit like a jigsaw?
Yes, very much.
So this is kind of what I do.
(03:32):
So I wrote a book a few years ago on a guy named Josiah Henson.
He was a slave who escaped from America to Canada before the Civil War.
that was, you know, looking at 200 year old newspaper clippings and traveling 5,000 milesto go to different plantations and reading dozens of different books and finding
(03:55):
uh little pieces here and there meeting up with descendants and you know and then pullingit all together.
It's the same with a God named Josh.
You know like what were Jesus's politics?
It isn't like John chapter 4, Jesus's politics.
Matthew chapter 8, Jesus's Jewishness.
You know uh Luke chapter 57, uh Jesus's economics.
(04:18):
It's not like that.
You got to piece it all together.
So yeah for a devil named Lucifer I definitely had to do that.
I would
say more so than my other books because he is so infrequently mentioned in the Bible.
There's very few appearances, definitive appearances of the devil in the Bible.
And another thing I appreciate about the book as well is you've tried to keep it asbiblically accurate as possible.
(04:43):
mean, with a book like this, The Temptation, what's something to talk about with this kindof a book?
The Temptation might have been to go, well, there's this whole kind of sort of demonologyand all this kind of stuff that you can draw in from other places.
And there's other books that kind of draw in other
beliefs and systems and stuff.
(05:05):
You could have delved into some of that, but you didn't.
You kind of stuck pretty much to the canon of scripture and what it says.
oh Thank you for saying that.
that's absolutely that was my intention.
I wanted to strip off the cultural baggage for certain um I really wanted to get down towhat does the Bible actually say there is there are an unbelievable number of books out
(05:29):
there on the Nephilim that will try to convince you that Demons had sex with women andthey created these like Satan babies like no not in the Bible um there are books that will
tell you that Jezebel is a real demon that she
It's like, no, the Bible does not say that.
um You know, people will tell you that the devil has horns and he's got fiery sulfurbreath and you know, he's all these different things.
(05:54):
We could talk about Azalel, Belial, Beelzebub, Legion, Mammon, all these demons that justaren't on and on and on.
It's just not biblical.
So I really wanted to strip it back to like, what can we actually know just from scriptureand let's not stray outside the lines of those, even though it's really fun and creative
to do so.
It's not biblical, it's not faithful to the Bible.
(06:15):
And speaking of cultural assumptions, mean, even Christians who want to try and stick asfaithfully to what the Bible actually says, um even when we come to scripture, we come to
it, don't we, with our own sort of preconceived ideas sometimes, our own kind of image ofthings, and especially, I think, of Satan or the devil, um we hear that name and
(06:43):
know, something comes to mind, whether we've watched a movie or whether we've read somesort of comic book or even like TV adverts, they sometimes use sort of images around sort
of Satan and that kind of thing with pitchforks and pointy tails and sort of horns out thehead.
you know, can you tell us more about that?
(07:04):
Because your book does go into quite some detail about where some of these ideas orcultural images come from.
Yeah, so basically everything that we picture in our heads when we think of the devil justis post biblical.
The horns are Dionysus, Isis or Baal.
The red eyes are from a medieval manuscript called the Codex Gigas.
(07:27):
The mustache and the goatee is the god Pan.
The fiery sulfur breath, Revelation 12.15 says he spews water, which is quite the mindrender.
uh Capentites is from a Faust play.
The wings are from Dante's Inferno.
The pitchfork is the Roman god of war, Mars, or the Roman god of the underworld, The redskin is the Egyptian god Set.
(07:52):
We don't have a single artistic impression of the devil prior to the sixth century.
They believe the first one, it's at a church in Ravenna and the devil is blue in thatimage.
But even that, you can't say the devil's blue either.
So the reality is the devil is spirit and he disguises himself as an angel of light.
He presents as a radiant messenger.
(08:13):
He doesn't have a physical body.
He is a spirit and he's the father of lies.
So whatever we think he looks like is just, we need to chuck that image out to start.
He's gonna look the opposite of that.
He's gonna look like fool's gold.
um He's gonna look like sex without commitment and knowledge without wisdom and wealthwithout contribution, tolerance without discernment.
(08:36):
Everything that glitters is not gold and he's presenting himself like a radiant messenger.
It, and this makes sense.
Like if I wanted to, like, if I wanted to attract Matt McChlery into my scheme, would Itry to scare him?
Would I try to terrorize him?
Would I try to disgust him?
Would I try to just make him just quake in his boots?
No, I would try to tempt him, seduce him.
(08:57):
I try to present things that are beautiful and attractive and alluring.
That's what's going to draw him in.
And so why would the devil, why would he think that scaring the bejesus out of people iswhat's going to draw them to him?
just isn't, it's nonsense.
Yeah.
And, and you just saying that brought to mind some, some of the, representations we getquite a lot in sort of TV and film these days.
(09:23):
and it may not necessarily be of the devil or Satan himself, although sometimes he isdefinitely a part, like a character in that story.
Um, but quite often it's this kind of, just the sort of sense or this force of evil.
That's sort of pervading everything.
And even the good guys in the story, you know, are really struggling to overcome thisseemingly sort of massively huge kind of evilness.
(09:51):
And you kind of thinking, goodness, will the good guys actually, actually make it out?
You know, it might not happen, but something that you said, the book, which I really likedis this, this, this, this idea we have of this equal fight where
sort of God or good and Satan or evil are battling it out sort of on an even um platformor an even scale um just isn't the case.
(10:23):
What more can you tell us about that?
Well, it's just it is a myth that the devil is the creator of all evil, that he's thesource of evil, that he's the personification of evil.
It's just not true.
Evil is rebellion against the word, will and way of God.
That's the word for sin is ha-martia, to miss the mark.
(10:45):
Anything that misses the mark of God's perfection is sin, is evil.
And so the devil is not the creator of that.
He's not the embodiment of that.
He's not the
Progenitor of all evil.
I am, you are.
Free will spirits that live in rebellion against the word, and way of God are the creatorsof evil.
(11:06):
And so is the devil evil?
Yes, absolutely.
But so am I.
If the devil didn't exist, if the demonic realm ceased to exist, if the devil was lockedup for a thousand years, evil would still prevail.
Why?
because there's eight billion human free will spirits living in rebellion against God.
And so there would still be child murder.
(11:28):
There would still be rape.
There would still be genocide and war.
There would still be planetary destruction because we are rebelling against God.
Another big myth is this idea of like the devil made me do it.
The devil cannot make you do anything.
If the devil could genuinely make you pull a trigger and kill someone and then Godpunishes a human for murdering someone,
(11:49):
then that means he is not a good judge and he is not God.
It's actually a heresy to say that the devil made you do it.
The devil can tempt you, he can test you, he can try to convince you to believe a lie thatyou should shoot that person or whatever, but he cannot physically make you pull the
trigger.
You, as a free will spirit, choose to pull the trigger.
And so to me, that's like, okay, if the devil isn't evil itself, that I actually have someresponsibility in this, then.
(12:17):
Okay, that really changes the conversation.
And mentioning free will, um you deal with free will as well in the book.
So why does God give us free will?
What's the point of free will and how does that all fit in with all of this?
No, normally we do the warm-up questions like his name isn't Lucifer Devil or Satan, butwe're hopping straight into
(12:38):
Let's uh
Yes, like, mean, like, let's, let's just start with the fact that like, if there is noGod, there is no evil, right?
If all there is, is quirks and quirks and electrons and neutrons and protons and stringtheory and physics, then murder is not real.
It doesn't really, right?
If, if you go out and you kill, if you wipe out a school of let's say 500 children, whathave you actually done?
(13:04):
Well, economically you've decreased demand for goods.
So you've helped inflation rates.
So that's kind of good.
It's good economically.
you, you've created 500 less people to demand resources.
So that's good for the planet.
And you just rearranged atoms.
You didn't like people don't matter.
They're just nutrients.
It doesn't matter.
(13:25):
like, you could make arguments that that mass murder is actually like, is actually likenet scientifically good.
Like there's a whole like pan humanist thinking that the world will be better when humansare wiped out, you know, whether it's.
naturally or by AI, the world will be in a better shape without us.
Like without a God, there is no evil.
(13:47):
You're just rearranging molecules.
So let's assume that there is a God and that missing his will is the definition of evil.
Once we have that understanding, then we can say, okay, so why does evil exist?
Why does rebellion exist?
And that is because God gave us free will.
Well, why did God give us free will?
(14:09):
If you do the spiritual math, free will is a base element of love.
Free will is the non-negotiable prerequisite for the possibility of love to exist.
If my wife had a button on her shoulder that every time I pushed it said, I love you,Jared, I love you, Jared, that's not real love.
It's only love if she has the opportunity to choose and say yes or to reject me.
(14:32):
There has to be the ability for her to refuse to choose to love me.
So God gave us free will because he didn't want slaves.
He wanted people to choose to love him.
so if, know, the reason evil exists is it was the only way to open the door to free willof us choosing to love and obey God.
(14:52):
So God had to risk all of our rebellion in order to have, to give us free will, whichmeans God's love must be the most important thing in the universe, that he was willing to
roll the dice on.
you know, child sex slavery and human trafficking and genocide and all this stuff.
But here's the thing, and teenagers have such a good intuitive grasp of this, so okay,picture the universe.
(15:17):
There's this idea of the multiverse, the idea that like, you know, if Matt turns left,there's one universe.
If Matt turns right, there's another universe.
What if God in his sovereignty has seen every possible version of what could be, whetherwe choose rebellion or obedience?
any given decision, all eight billion of us for all of human history, what if God has seenevery single version of that, and every single version of that, he has come up with a plan
(15:48):
to restore and redeem all things unto himself?
That is how I've found a way to reconcile the idea of like God's sovereignty andultimately being in control and us having free will, is that God does give us.
limited free will.
You I can't jump a thousand feet in the air and I can't live forever.
I don't have ultimate free will.
just physics still exists.
um God also has a free will and for whatever reason he said, I'm going to give thesepeople limited free will to choose to love or reject me.
(16:15):
And when they choose rejection in different areas of their life, I'm going to meet themthere with a plan to redeem and restore.
That to me is like, my goodness, God, you are so brilliant, so loving, so patient with us.
And the moral of story is
Evil exists because God wants more love and obedience to exist.
And he will eventually eradicate all evil, all rebellion.
(16:39):
We will live in obedience to God.
Every knee will bow.
Every tongue will confess that Jesus is Lord and the kingdom will reign in its fullness.
And that will be a very, very good day.
And until then, we just have to put up with this huge amount of suffering that is causedby free will rebellion.
You mention in your book, A Devil Named Lucifer, that Satan isn't mentioned in the Biblevery much.
(17:03):
We've kind of alluded to it with the of the dot-to-dot picture earlier.
But what can you tell us about how many times Satan is mentioned in the Bible and whatwords he actually speaks and all that kind of thing?
Mm-hmm.
Okay, so let's let's back up all the way to Lucifer.
So the book is called the Devil Name Lucifer.
That's not that's not because that's his name.
(17:23):
That's just because that's what people call him.
The word Lucifer does not appear in the original Hebrew or Greek Bible.
It doesn't exist.
He is not called Lucifer, full stop period, end of.
But a couple hundred years later, there's a Latin translation.
They use the word Lucifer several times in it, mostly to translate words like day star ormorning star.
A Lucifer
(17:44):
is a light bearer or a light bringer.
The first match ever created was called a Lucifer.
And there's three different uh beings, things in scripture that are described as lightbearers, light bringers.
Jesus is described as a Lucifer, Christians are described as Lucifers, and creation isdescribed as uh Lucifer.
(18:04):
But the devil is never described as a light bearer.
He is not a light bringer.
He disguises himself as a light bearer.
He disguises himself as an angel of light, but he is not a Lucifer.
So that's Lucifer.
His name is also not devil or Satan.
Just like I wrote with a God named Josh, Jesus's name was not Jesus.
That's just the English name.
(18:25):
His name was Yehoshua in Hebrew.
The devil's name or Satan's name, the two words that we're translating there in Hebrew andGreek are hasatan and diabolos.
I think we need to get rid of.
devil and Satan from our English Bibles because we have so much silly pictures of himsitting on our shoulder, all that baggage.
(18:46):
We should ditch those and call him by the Hebrew and Greek word that the original readerswould have heard and understood.
So we'd have the same emotional and mental hit.
And those words are accuser, adversary.
That's who he is and that's what he does.
He accuses adversarially.
And this being doesn't show up that much in the Bible.
(19:08):
There's lots of times in the Bible where someone or something is called the Satan or thedevil.
So for instance, the first Satan in the Bible is King David.
He comes out, they're worried that he's gonna come out as a Satan against them, as anadversary against them.
So if you actually look at capital S, know the Satan, so not the Satan, the devil, butactual Satan as a name, he only makes a definitive appearance on three unique occasions in
(19:36):
the Old Testament.
And as the devil three unique occasions in the new Testament, the dot, Bible talks aboutdonkeys more than it talks about the devil.
There's more stories in the Bible about olive oil than there is about Satan.
Satan actually ranks between cheese and bread for number of you can make a Satan sandwichout of how few times he's in the Bible.
And he barely speaks.
Like if you do the math, he speaks around 200 words in English translations, um, which it,when you subtract the fact that almost half of what he says is him either quoting or
(20:05):
misquoting scripture.
It's not even close to 1 % of the, he's an absolute rounding error in the Bible.
barely, he's barely on the page.
So yeah, he's not this looming figure that people think at first glance.
Yeah, I found that really interesting.
um Yeah, and those sort of the the word root origins and things um Yeah, reallyinteresting You also deal with the topic of hell now I Was reading the book thinking okay.
(20:35):
Okay, you know, I get it I understand the root origins and all this kind of thing but inthe back of my mind I kept thinking hmm.
What's Jared going to do with hell?
What's he going to say about hell, you know?
because uh that can be quite a hot topic in Christian circles.
So what can you tell us about hell?
(20:58):
P.S.
I love how you said hell is a hot topic and you genuinely didn't even know.
So again, I always want to go back to scripture and I don't want, I can't confidently sayA, B or C if I can't show it to people from the word of God, right?
I'm just reporting what I see people.
(21:20):
And so there's like five different, five or six different.
So there's hell, there's sheol, there's Tartarus, which is like, whoa, how did a Greekmyth sneak its way into the Bible?
What's going on there?
There's the abyss, there's the lake of fire.
(21:40):
So there's a number of terms and like, is which.
and Hades, that's boom, six, I remembered it, wow.
And how are they related?
Are some of them the same?
If I recall correctly, don't speak, I don't even talk about this very much.
It doesn't really come up in interviews.
And of course I wrote this book almost two years ago now, but it's, it, there is thissense that like hell, shale, the abyss, they're kind of all the same.
(22:08):
They're like the same, they're, they're like different words for the same kind of concept.
The lake of fire seems to be separate from that because it says that
the hell is going to be like thrown into the lake of fire.
So, okay, that seems like it's a separate kind of entity.
The lake of fire, the Bible's very clear, was not created for humans.
(22:28):
It said the lake of fire, which was created for the devil and the antichrist, that that'swhat it was for.
But if other free will entities are going to live in rebellion against the word, well, inthe way of God, they are going to live in separation from God for eternity.
the lake of fire wasn't originally meant for any human.
beings because we were supposed to be in communion with God.
(22:50):
But yeah, there's these different terms.
em Hell and Sheol, the abyss, they're quite Old Testament-y and they seem almost like aholding place for the end times.
But if there's no time, once you're dead, does that mean it's just instant?
(23:12):
Like the second you die, is it just over because you're outside of time now?
as physical human beings, can't understand being outside of the temporal plane.
We don't know.
We just don't know.
Yeah.
So it's not, it's not a case of hell doesn't exist.
Hell exists, it's sure of what that comes up with the Bible isn't particularly clear.
(23:36):
Yeah.
Okay.
Good.
Cool.
So you talk about some of the strategies Satan uses against um Christians.
um Is it something like an epic battle, like from Lord of the Rings going on or, or
Is it demon possession you see in scary movies or is it something else?
(23:58):
What's like his favorite go-to way of sort of, I don't know, attacking Christians orsomething like
Yeah, well, just in regards to the exorcism thing really quick.
So obviously movies are about drama and action and getting your heart racing.
It's important to remember that Jesus is an exorcist.
(24:20):
He's constantly casting out unclean spirits.
That's weird, Jesus the exorcist, right?
That seems like a strange thing.
And I have no doubt that the demonic realm was never more active in human history thanwhen Jesus was on the planet.
Think about if...
like Winston Churchill had to parachute it into Germany, how the Nazis would have justlike, gone absolutely crazy trying to find them, right?
(24:42):
Or Eisenhower, like they would have gone nuts.
Like I imagine that there's never been more demonic activity to that point in time thanwhen Jesus was actually on the planet.
And then of course they think they have victory when they nail him to the cross and thenhe comes back and they're like, shoot, now we're back to square one.
And I imagine that the next largest.
moment of demonic activity will be this great tribulation, knowing that the end is rightaround the corner and that it's absolute white boat for the forces of darkness.
(25:10):
So Jesus's exorcisms are very drama free.
There's no head spinning in circles.
There's no climbing off the walls.
There's no bleeding from the eyeballs or any of this nonsense.
It's typically like whispers.
It's Jesus telling demons to stop telling the truth.
Cause they're always like, you're the son of God.
And he's like, be quiet, go away.
And then, right?
(25:30):
And then the people who he exercises, he mostly tells them, don't tell anyone, just likego back to your life.
Like he doesn't really, he doesn't say like, hey, tweet this, hey, make a TikTok aboutthis.
He's like very low key.
You know, it's drama free.
And my best friend runs a demonic deliverance ministry and it's very similar.
(25:52):
He's like, I get preternaturally calm in these moments.
They obey at the name of Jesus.
There's just, there's no drama that we see in films.
And that seems to me like the most Christ-like way to do an exorcism.
Anyways, what was your question, Matt?
It had nothing to do with exorcism.
It was about um the strategy that Satan uses, the main way.
(26:18):
Yeah.
So picture your life like a house and you look out the window and you see something thatlooks alluring.
It's a temptation.
um The devil's strategy seems to be temptation, fixation, obsession, possession.
So his goal is to build a stronghold in your house and to build a stronghold, he needs toget a foothold.
(26:43):
He needs you to crack that door open.
you're looking out.
you know, through your eyes, you see through the window of your heart, you see thistemptation, you begin to fixate on it, you begin to obsess with it, and then you open the
door, and the devil just puts a foot in that door, and then he just puts in a ratchet andratchets that door wide open.
Once he's inside, he just wants to start laying concrete and build a pillbox, just like abunker in your life.
(27:05):
If you are a Christian, the devil can never own you, he can never possess you, can nevercontrol you, you do not belong to him, you legally belong.
to Christ, you you are bought at a price if you are a Christian.
um But it doesn't mean he can't absolutely try to ruin your life, blow off your leg,destroy your marriage, wreck your relationship with your kids, wreck your career, wreck
(27:26):
your calling, wreck your ministry.
He can absolutely try to devastate you.
um So I think this is why Jesus prays, you know, lead us not into temptation.
Like, God, please help me to stay so far away from temptation.
I don't wanna fixate, I don't wanna obsess.
because I don't want to have a foothold that becomes a stronghold.
So here's some examples of footholds versus strongholds.
(27:47):
So like self-will can become rebellion, anger, violence, hatred, murder, distraction, idolworship, lust, adultery, fear, paralysis.
These are, you know, a false teaching apostasy.
These are different kinds of footholds that can become strongholds.
The Christian response, the Bible says resist the devil and he will flee.
(28:10):
we can see every temptation as a servant of God.
We can thank God for allowing it because it's an opportunity for victory.
I heard a quote somewhere that said something like, uh you absorb the strength of everytemptation you overcome.
Now that's not like biblical, it's just like a good, it's a good image.
I think a really smart initial strategy though is just to avoid temptation as much aspossible.
(28:32):
There's these stories told that.
that, you know, so-called the passengers on the Titanic when it hit the iceberg, they liketook ice chunks and put it in their cocktails and champagne or whatever.
You don't want to get so close to the iceberg that it rips out the underside of your life.
You want to steer so clear.
So here's a simple example.
I have never seen pornography on a cell phone because I don't own a cell phone.
(28:53):
I don't have a mobile device.
um If you are addicted to ice cream, ah well, if the nearest ice cream shop is an houraway or you're addicted to shopping,
and you don't have Amazon Prime or you don't live near a mall, you can avoid, I wouldargue, the vast majority of temptations in life can be avoided by removing yourself from
(29:15):
the vicinity of those temptations.
And then for the rest that do come, really see those as a servant of God and anopportunity for victory.
That's really helpful, Jared.
Thank you.
We'll be back after these.
I'm chatting some more with Jared Brock about his life and his fate.
So join us after these.
Samantha had been raised by Bama, her grandmother, until her 12th birthday, when hermother suddenly showed up to claim her.
(29:43):
So began a strange new life for Sam.
Thousands of miles from home and cut off from her friends, her Bama and from everythingfamiliar.
Bama finds a way to stay connected while Sam learns to see the beauty, the sunlight behindthe fog that clouds her adolescence.
Now, almost two decades later,
(30:04):
Her grandmother has passed away and Sam must figure out how to manage what remains ofBama's life and farm business, Royalty Garlic.
She needs to find a way to get rid of possessions while preserving their memories.
She must say a final goodbye, honouring the amazing woman she loved.
This episode of Christian Book Blurb is sponsored by the Christian fiction novella GarlicQueen by Wendy Lord.
(30:31):
And it's available now from Wendy's website, wendylordbooks.com.
Do go and buy yourself a copy today.
If you enjoy listening to this podcast, you can help keep it on the web.
All you've got to do is buy me a coffee.
Head over to buymeacoffee.com slash Matt McChlery to make a donation.
(30:53):
There is a link in this episode's show notes.
So go on, buy me a coffee today and help this podcast to keep supporting Christian booksand authors.
Hi, welcome back to the Christian Book Blurb.
I'm chatting with author Jared Brock all about his book, A Devil Named Lucifer.
(31:13):
Now, Jared, at this point in the show, we like to get to know the author a little bitbetter.
So let's...
I saw this in your notes and I was very excited and I was also kind of nervous.
was like, I don't know if I've done this before.
is a juicy.
it's great.
Some listeners can get in touch and say, this is our favorite bit.
(31:34):
what do do for fun?
What, what, what, what, you know, excites.
Okay.
Well, so I have a three year old boy and a one year old boy.
So I have endless amounts of reading and wrestling and going to the park right now.
It's Blackberry season here in England.
So we are picking Blackberries once, if not twice every single day.
(31:55):
um For fun, I like to read a lot.
um I'm currently reading a uh book on the Clapham sect, which was
William Whippleforce's Friends Circle, just this group of epic Christians in the late1700s, early 1800s, who essentially abolished slavery and reformed British manners.
(32:15):
They like created the Victorian era basically, probably, you know, the last great era ofthe UK.
This small group of friends was just astounding at the work they did.
So yeah.
um
I love to read.
I'm big into film.
I'm also a filmmaker.
I've directed four or five documentaries.
(32:36):
name of one of them.
We can go and check it out.
Yes, actually, are ones called Red Light, Green Light, it's on human trafficking.
Over 18 is on teenage addiction to pornography.
That's for parents.
Redeem Uncle Tom, narrated by Danny Glover, is about this amazing Christian slave.
Those are all available to watch for free on my website, JaredRock.com.
(32:59):
I love film.
I love reading.
love hanging out with my boys.
Don't get to do it much in the UK because of the weather, but I love basketball andtennis.
Any sunny day you will find us at the beach.
will drive to the ocean and just read on the beach.
But 30 minutes.
that's not too bad.
And what sort of beach is it?
(33:20):
it like a stony beach or lovely lush sands of palm trees?
mean, let's take it a bit far knowing that you in the UK, but.
Beach kind of believe it or not we live in the northeast of England and we are half anhour from a thick sandy beach that even has some even has some manks palm trees nearby so
(33:40):
I thought it was making.
It's called Sand Haven and even the king, think it was King George, visited it and said itwas the nicest beach he'd ever been to.
So there we go.
There you go.
Great.
got a beach stamped with a prove of right.
Great.
Wonderful.
Any favorite things to eat?
(34:04):
Yeah, so I do all the cooking in our home.
My wife is my sous chef, but I do the cooking.
um We're a pretty carnivore family.
My son, when he was learning to talk, his first phrase was, more beef, which I thought waspretty fabulous.
I'm known for a couple of legendary items.
One is called a burrito suizo, which is a Swiss burrito.
(34:26):
So you get a giant 18-inch tortilla shell.
You fill it with meat and rice and beans.
You then wrap it up and you put the salsa on the outside.
You get to do a proper baptism, covered in cheese, bake it in the oven and fork and knifeit like the queen, just very posh.
So I do that.
I also am known for doing, you know, uh one pound burgers with grilled cheese buns.
(34:50):
So cheese toasties has the buns.
Butter chicken from scratch.
like, yeah, those would be some of my favorite.
Yeah, wonderful, Tea or coffee?
So I actually don't caffeinate.
got my DNA tested a few years ago and it was like, you do not drink caffeine.
Your body process it so quickly that it's rendered useless.
(35:12):
So yeah, I'm not a tea or coffee person.
My wife drinks three teas a day because she's a good Brit and I call it weed water.
It is irrelevant to me.
uh
that's fascinating.
Chocolate or sweets?
oh So I read that one and I was like, Matt, those are the same thing.
Chocolate is sweet, but to Brits it's different.
(35:34):
Yes, it's sweet.
but you know, candy, candy.
Yeah, so I was allergic to chocolate growing up, so I'm to go with candy on this one.
oh
All right.
Oh, interesting.
And you've already mentioned your family.
Do you have another job?
Do you do something else other than writing and making films or is that where you kind offocus most of your
Yeah, so I write books and I make documentaries currently uh editing a documentary on theglobal housing crisis.
(36:02):
We think it's probably going to be our biggest film ever because landlords and bankers aredestroying housing and we need to stop it.
They will not stop until they are stopped and we are enslaving the next generation tobanks and landlords and I have a huge problem with that.
The Bible says it was for freedom that crisis set us free and
(36:22):
Landlording is a form of interest.
It's profit on lending, which the Bible is very against.
so, uh yeah, we're on a war path with that film to uh try.
We've gotten some laws changed in Canada with our previous films.
And uh this is the kind of thing where we'd love to start an international conversation oncompletely reforming how we look at sheltering human beings.
(36:45):
Sounds very interesting.
Moving on to a slightly more spiritual personal question.
What is the Holy Spirit doing in your life at the moment?
so I'm a dad of young kids.
So it's revealing all my problems.
(37:08):
You just, you see your, you see your three year old son do something and you're like,shoot, that's me.
That's me.
This is do it.
Oh no.
So yeah, it's, it's, it's patients.
It's, it's working on my patients, working on my anger, working on those are the big tworight now.
I think I'm just.
trying to be more kind and gentle.
(37:29):
patient.
Bless you.
I'm the father of three.
A bit further along, but I can completely identify.
Yeah, for sure.
uh Sometimes you need, I don't know if you're at this point yet, but I feel like someoneneeds to buy me like a whistle and like a referee's uniform.
(37:54):
Yeah.
Because that seems to be that the main thing I'm doing at the minute is
Grafana.
referee breaking up the arguments anyway.
Nevermind.
It's all, it all comes and goes.
It's all the part of the fun of
To be clear, I love being a dad.
We waited 13 years to have kids because we couldn't afford it.
(38:14):
We were really housing insecure.
My only regret in life is not having kids way sooner.
has been the joy.
People did not sell it well.
They woefully undersold how happy being a dad makes a man.
(38:34):
It's wild.
that's great.
have you got anything coming up?
So what you've told us, what you're working on, let's talk books because you've writtenseveral.
Um, this is just one of the many.
So I am assuming you've got another iron in the fire or some thoughts sort of meandering,or you might even be starting to write something.
(38:58):
Who knows what's, what's coming up in the future.
Yes.
So we have now finished shooting a free 10 hour video course for Christians on Christianeconomics.
ah And I'm currently editing the book as well.
So the book is done and I'm editing it.
(39:19):
Christians, I've sat through almost 2000 church sermons in my lifetime, 40 years inchurch, and I've never heard a sermon on Christian economics.
You'll occasionally hear
a very dodgy radio guru style talk on personal finance, but you'll almost never hear ateaching on Christian economics.
(39:44):
And economics is upstream of politics, culture, war, climate change, you name the issue.
Economics is upstream of essentially everything except the human heart.
And Christians are woefully under resourced when it comes to
knowing about Christian economics, what does the word will and way of Jesus say about howwe allocate resources?
(40:08):
And so I've spent the last five years on this and it's definitely the biggest projectever.
This is my like hard calling, it's my burden.
It's like, it's the thing I care about most in life.
And so this has been the culmination of five years of work.
So that course is gonna be totally free.
God willing, it'll come out some point in the fall, as well as the book.
um Hopefully the book will be out by Christmas, but yeah, Christian economics is.
(40:31):
is what I think I'll probably spend the rest of my life.
There's 2.63 billion Christians and my goal is to just teach them all Christian economics.
So just a little, yeah.
That's just a small way.
Yeah.
Where can we find, well, you've already mentioned your website, but let's mention itagain.
Um, where can people find out more about you, your books, your films, all that sort of.
(40:53):
JaredBrock.com, anyone can watch all my films for free.
You can also download my first book, A Year of Living Prayerfully for free there as well.
And you can also get free sample chapters of all the other books, watch the book trailers.
So you can get the first couple chapters of A God Named Josh and A Devil Named Lucifer andall my books there.
(41:14):
Everything's at JaredBrock.com.
That's great.
Thank you, Judd.
It's been wonderful speaking with you and it's been a joy having you on the show.
Thanks so much.
Thank you so much to the Christian Novella Garlic Queen by Wendy Lord, who sponsoredtoday's episode.
Do go and check it out now on wendylordbooks.com.
(41:36):
And thank you as well for listening to this episode of the Christian Book Blur podcast.
Don't forget that this podcast comes out twice a month on the 1st and on the 15th, so itwon't be long.
before I'm back again speaking to another Christian author all about their books and theirlife and their faith to help you grow in your discipleship one book at a time.
So I do look forward to seeing you again then.
(41:57):
Thanks so much.
Goodbye.
Thanks for listening to Christian Book Blurb with your host, Matt McChlery.
Do give it a like, give it a share and let your friends know all about it.
We do hope to see you again soon on another Christian Book Blurb.
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