The evil one is pleased with sadness and melancholy because he himself is sad and melancholy, and will be so for all eternity. Hence he desires that everyone should be like himself.

Satan's primary tool of accusation is the bluff. If he can convince you that he's got a better 'hand' before God than you do (that his accusation will be entertained), he wins. This is a pretty loose approximation and needs to be refined. It's got potential as a skit of a poker game. I get two students to come forth and play a fake game of poker. One wagers everything, and I walk around and peek at his cards. Then I tell the other guy, "He's bluffing." Sort of like God telling us Satan is bluffing--his accusation won't be entertained.

There is no uncreated being except God. God has no opposite. No being could attain a "perfect badness" opposite to the perfect goodness of God; for when you have taken away every kind of good thing (intelligence, will, memory, energy, and existence itself) there would be none of him left.

A skillful liar lies not only in word but in gesture and deed; he can as easily pass a bad coin as tell an untruth. The Devil is a skillful liar, and we cannot expect him to stop at words in his lying. He will resort to lying signs and feelings and experiences in his attempts to shake us from our faith in God's Word. Let me make it clear that I do not deny the reality of the `flesh'. Indeed we shall have a good deal more to say about this further on in our study. But I am speaking here of our being moved from a revealed position in Christ. As soon as we have accepted our death with Christ as a fact, Satan will do his best to demonstrate convincingly by the evidence of our day-to-day experience that we are not dead at all but very much alive. So we must choose. Will we believe Satan's lie or God's truth? Are we going to be governed by appearances or by what God says?