<p>2:9 <em>I know your tribulation and your poverty (but you are rich) and the blasphemy of those that say they are Jews, and they are not, but are a synagogue of Satan</em>- As noted on 1 Jn. 4:1 and elsewhere, the main enemy of the early churches were the Judaist infiltrators who came in under the guise of being Christian brethren (Gal. 2:4). There was an entire system, the Satan / adversary, consciously seeking to destroy the Christian movement. Exclusion from the synagogue system was the punishment for confessing the Lord Jesus (Jn. 9:22), and this meant economic exclusion, unable to buy or sell. Hence their poverty, and tribulation orchestrated by these Jewish infiltrators. They typically operated by making false accusation against the Christian in this sense acting as a devil, which means 'false accuser', and then getting local Gentile civil powers to punish the Christians, just as they did with the Lord.</p><p>&ldquo;Satan&rdquo; often refers to the Jewish and Roman adversaries of the church in the first century. There is no indication here that there was a super&ndash;human being working through those Roman and Jewish systems. If it is argued that those systems received power and direction from the Devil in the sense of a super&ndash;human being to persecute the church, it must be remembered that the Lord Jesus told the Roman governor: &ldquo;You could have no power at all against me, except it were given you from above&rdquo;, i.e. from God (Jn. 19:11). Thus it is God, not the Devil, who gives power to human governments to persecute His people, as He gave them power to do so to His Son. &ldquo;The most high rules in the kingdom of men, and gives it to whomsoever he will&rdquo; (Dan. 4:32). Thus God was ultimately the power behind the Roman Satan, or system, that was persecuting the Christians in the first century.</p>