Cohoon/Gary Debate on Satan

 
 
 Proposition: 
 The Scriptures teach all power is from God and believing in a 
powerful fallen angel named "Satan" is having another god beside 
God.

AFFIRM: James Gary
DENY: Bobby Cohoon

In this my first denial of Brother Gary’s affirmative, I wish to 
start by not addressing his affirmative but addressing charges of 
his third denial. 

I had stated in my Third Affirmative that there is no record of 
anything being created past the creation week of Genesis. Brother 
Gary claimed otherwise and said that the “great fish” of Jonah 
was created later. Examining the scriptures, I have found that 
this can not be substantiated. Working from Young’s Literal 
Translation (This seems to be the one that Brother Gary has based 
most of his claims on) Jonah 1:17 is rendered as “And Jehovah 
appointeth a great fish to swallow up Jonah.” Being appointed is 
not the same thing as being created. President Bush has appointed 
many people to be ambassadors to other nations, yet he has not 
“created” any of them. The case in Jonah is one in which God used 
what he had already created to accomplish His goal.  The King 
James Version AV 1611 renders is as “Now the Lord had prepared a 
great fish to swallow vp Ionah.” Again we have a case where the 
great fish was not created but already in existence, only made 
ready for the task. 

Moving on to our discussion of Matthew 8:30-32, I amazed that 
Brother Gary quoted the Lamsa version, a translation often used 
by cultist including the Christadelphians. Lamsa’s translation is 
based on the Peshitta. Among the doctrines that Lamsa held were 
that Jesus had NO physical resurrection. Lamsa denies that Jesus 
had the power to heal and the he, Jesus, only spoke words of 
comfort to the sick. Lamsa, like Brother Gary, denied the 
existence of Satan and believed that a person’s “demons” were a 
way to refer their insanity, wrong thoughts, desires or 
practices. Lamsa claimed his version to be based on an older 
version of the Bible in Aramaic, the Peshitta, thus making it a 
“better” translation and closer to the original. His claim was 
that his version was more faithful to the original, when in fact 
his version only used the King James to which he changed words to 
fit his own beliefs. His view was struck down with the discovery 
of the Dead Sea Scrolls which showed that the Masoretic Text was 
closer to the original than Lamsa’s translation. Dr. Lamsa, whose 
translation is mostly used by cults, mistranslates the Greek 
“daimon” as lunatics. Why would Jesus set a man free of demons 
only to drown him?

A few other errors in the Lamsa translation are: Matthew 5:22 he 
translates hellfire to mental suffering; John 1:18 he renders 
“the only begotten” as “the first one who recognized the 
fatherhood of God.” This list could go on and on, but these few 
examples are enough to show the error of Lamsa’s translation. It 
is interesting that Paul Younan’s translation of the Peshitta 
does not use the word “lunatics” in Matthew 8:30-32, he uses the 
same wording as the King James translators: devils. 

Let us not forget who Michael was contending with about the body 
of Moses: “Yet Michael the Archangel, when contending with the 
DEUILL, he disputed about the body of Moses, durst not bring 
against him a railing accusation, but said, The Lord rebuke thee” 
(Jude 1:9 KJV 1611) [emphasis added].

Brother Gary denies the existence of what Jesus saw as real: 

And he seide to hem, Y saiy Sathnas fallynge doun fro heuene, as 
leit. (Wycliffe).
And he sayde vnto them: I sawe satan as it had bene lightenyng 
faule doune fro heave. (Tyndale)
And he said vnto them: I sawe Satan as it had ben lyghtnyng, 
fallyng downe from heauen (Bishops Bible 1568).
And he said vnto them, I sawe Satan, like lightening, fall downe 
from heauen (Geneva Bible)

And he said vnto them, I beheld Satan as lightning fall from 
heauen (kjv 1611).
And He said to them, I saw Satan fall from Heaven like lightning 
(NKJV)
And he said unto them, I beheld Satan fallen as lightning from 
heaven. (ASV)
Y El les dijo: Yo veía a Satanás caer del cielo como un rayo. 
(Biblia de Las Americas).
And he said to them, "I saw Satan fall like lightning from 
heaven. (ESV).
eipe de autois etheoroun ton satanas hos astrapen ek ton ouravou 
pesonta (Greek text of the TEXTUS RECEPTUS AND WECOTT HORT).
He said to them, I saw Satan falling like lightning from heaven. 
(Version translated by cultist George Lamsa).

To Jesus Christ, God incarnate, Satan was a real entity. 

On to Brother Gary’s first affirmative. Brother Gary spent a lot 
of space addressing the condition of man’s heart and the fact 
that man sins and that God corrects man. “My sonne, despise not 
thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked 
of him” (KJV 1611). This is a fact that I do not deny. 
Unfortunately it is not the subject of this debate or this 
affirmative: The Scriptures teach all power is from God and 
believing in a powerful fallen angel named "Satan" is having 
another god beside God. 

As near as Brother Gary came to the terms of the affirmation was 
mentioning “a fallen spiritual being that is not even mentioned 
in the Scriptures?” (James Gary first affirmative).  The above 
verse from Luke indicates that Satan was mentioned in the 
scriptures, by Jesus, as a real entity, a spiritual being as he 
had to be in Heaven, thus spiritual,  to be seen falling from 
there.

Instead of basing his beliefs on sound Bible translations Brother 
Gary has been the victim of such cultist translations as the 
Lamsa version and clings to beliefs near the Christadelphians. 
One can choose to worship what ever one wants be it money, sex, 
lust, Satan or God, but that doesn’t change the fact that there 
is only one living true God manifest to us simultaneously in 
three distinct persons: God the Father God the Son and God the 
Holy Ghost. 

In Him,
Bobby Cohoon