Does Satan Do That?

Recently I was talking with a friend about a failed plan to get together. Our meeting would have taken some planning and travel. We pondered why, why our plan for along-overdue reunion fell through due to circumstances beyond our control.

He suggested that God’s plans over rule ours. “Man proposes, but God disposes.” It says something like that in Proverbs. But is it always God? Does God make our carefully crafted plans fall through?

I speak and ask here for Christians who believe in God and Satan.

When I was growing up in church almost everyone talked about God’s plan and how everything that happens, sin excepted, is God’s doing. Once in a while someone would bring up Satan but almost only in the context of temptation.

But I remember a verse in the New Testament. 1 Thessalonians 2:18. Paul there says he wanted to visit the Christians in Thessaloniki but was prevented by Satan! Does Satan do that? Can Satan do that? If it happened to Paul, why do we not think it can happen to us?

All I’m asking is why we American Christians of all types are so reluctant to attribute frustrated plans to Satan, especially when the “things” in question are good, edifying, spiritually helpful, like the reunion of two long-time Christian friends.

Is this another reaction to over-emphasis on Satan? I once taught at a large charismatic university where the president, a well-known celebrity, “testified” in chapel that Satan tried to kill him. His arm was in a sling. Soon after that, a faculty member who worked closely with him told me privately that what really happened was that the evangelist-president tried to ride his granddaughter’s ten speed bicycle down a sidewalk near his home and, not knowing the brakes were on the handlebars, ran into a tree.

After that two year stint when I frequently heard Satan blamed for all kinds of things (always only chapels), I closed my mind to blaming Satan for anything other than (for example) temptation and inspiring evil (but not causing it). (I’ve always thought Satan was somehow behind the Holocaust although certainly the men who carried it out were to blame.)

Then I stumbled across that verse in 1 Thessalonians. What to do with it?

I don’t believe in building a doctrine on one or two verses of the Bible. But IF we believe God inspired scripture, we have to somehow account for such a claim. Somehow or other, Paul knew, or thought he knew, that Satan prevented him from visiting the Thessalonian Christians.

There is a famous story, told my Martin Luther himself, that, when he was in hiding in the Wartburg “castle” and translating the New Testament into German, Satan or a demon distracted him. He even threw an inkwell at him or it. For years the ink stain on the wall of that room could be seen. Later, to please tourists, the keepers of the castle had to splash the wall with new ink every few months.

This is a question, as I said earlier, ONLY to fellow Bible-believing evangelical Christians (or Bible-believing Christians who don’t identify as “evangelical”). Is it feasible that Satan could interfere in a plan? If not, what to do with 1 Thessalonians 2:18 and other verses in the Bible that attribute events or interference in plans to Satan or “territorial spirits?” (Daniel 10:13)

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