<p>3:26<em> And if Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand, but has an end- </em>The Jews accused the Lord of being in league with the prince of the demons, Beelzebub. His comment was that if the family / house of Satan was so divided, then Satan &ldquo;has an end&rdquo; (Mk. 3:26). His approach was &lsquo;OK you believe in demons, Beelzebub etc. Well if that&rsquo;s the case, then according to the extension of your logic, Satan will soon come to an end, will cease existence. That&rsquo;s the bottom line. As it happens, I am indeed &lsquo;binding the strong man&rsquo;, rendering Satan powerless, making him &lsquo;have an end&rsquo;, and so whichever way you look at it, believing in demons or not, the bottom line is that My miracles demonstrate that effectively Satan is powerless and not an item now&rsquo;. The way the New Testament is written reflects the same approach. When the Lord was alone with His disciples, He explained further: &ldquo;If they have called the Master of the House i.e. Jesus &lsquo;Beelzebub&rsquo;, how much more shall they call them of his household?&rdquo; i.e. the disciples (Mt. 10:25). By saying this, the Lord was clarifying that of course He didn&rsquo;t <em>really </em>mean that He was part of the Satan family, working against Satan to destroy the entire family. Rather was He and His family quite separate from the Satan family. But He didn&rsquo;t make that clarification to the Jewish crowds &ndash; He simply used their idea and reasoned with them on their own terms. Note in passing how the Jews actually thought Jesus was Beelzebub, or Satan. This would be one explanation for their mad passion to kill Him; for those labelled &lsquo;Satan&rsquo; were hunted to their death in such societies, as seen later in the witch hunts of the middle ages. The Jews say Jesus as a false miracle worker, a false Messiah, a bogus Son of God &ndash; all characteristics of their view of &lsquo;Satan&rsquo;. Some centuries later, the Jewish sage Maimonides described Jesus in terms of the antichrist: &ldquo;Daniel had already alluded to him when he presaged the downfall of a wicked one and a heretic among the Jews who would endeavour to destroy the Law, claim prophecy for himself, make pretences to miracles, and allege that he is the Messiah&rdquo; (<em>Maimonides&rsquo; Epistle to Yemen</em>). It&rsquo;s been suggested that the way the Jewish rabbinical writings call Him <em>Yeshu</em> is an acronym for the Hebrew expression<em> yemach shemo vezichro</em> &ndash; &ldquo;May his name and memory be obliterated&rdquo;. This was the very Jewish definition of Satan. They saw Jesus as Satan himself; hence they were so insistent on slaying Him. Yet by the deft twist of Divine providence, it was through the death of Jesus that the <em>real </em>Devil (i.e. the power of sin) was in fact slain (Heb. 2:14). To those with perceptive enough minds to see it, yet once again the Jewish ideas had been turned back upon them to reveal the real nature of the Devil to them, within their own frames of reference and terminology. Likewise Beelzebub means literally &lsquo;the lord of the house&rsquo;; and the Lord Jesus alludes to this in describing Himself as the Master of the House of God.</p>