Can Satan read our minds / know our thoughts?

"A. R.," Ryde. We do not believe that Satan is a discerner of the thoughts of the heart. This is a divine prerogative. (See Heb. 4) We doubt not that well nigh six thousand years of experience and observation have given Satan an amazing knowledge of man, and profound skill in dealing with him; but Satan is only a creature, having no power against one who is walking in the energy of the divine nature. (1 John 5:18)

In answer to the Lord's question as to where he had come from, Satan replied, "From going to and fro on the earth, and from walking back and forth in it" (v.7). This establishes the fact that Satan is not omnipresent, as God is. Satan can be only in one place at a time, however quickly he may travel. Yet he has many agents, evil spirits, who carry on his wicked work throughout the world, and we know that work is prospering dreadfully. Some have questioned too whether Satan knows our thoughts. Absolutely not! Only God knows the hearts and the thoughts of mankind. He only is omniscient.

With respect to the knowledge of thoughts, he does not know them intuitively, as God does; but he knows as a spirit full of intelligence and subtlety, who discerns with the greatest clearness the motives of the heart, and who has gained experience by the practice of many thousand years: but I believe that he understands nothing of the power of love. He was able in his malice to raise up the Chaldeans, etc., through desire of plunder, against Job; but not in any way knowing the purpose of God to bless him by this means, he did nothing but fulfil it. He did all that he could to get Christ put to death, but he only fulfilled the wonderful purpose of God for our salvation. However, when he has to do with the evil heart of man, the case is different. He can present objects to awaken lust. If we reckon ourselves to be dead, dead to sin, and alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord, he is not able to tempt us, at least, the temptation remains without effect; but if the flesh is not held as dead, then he can present objects which the flesh likes, and suggest to a man the means of satisfying his lusts. Thus he put it into the heart of Judas to betray Jesus for a little money. But man is responsible, because without lust Satan could do nothing: he has nothing to offer to the new man, or if he offers anything, it only produces horror in the soul; the soul suffers as Christ suffered at the sight of evil in this world, or else it overcomes as Christ overcame in the wilderness. But, when the soul is not set free, he can indeed insinuate wicked thoughts, and unbelieving thoughts, and words of blasphemy, in such a way that these words and thoughts seem to proceed from the man himself. Nevertheless if the man is truly converted, we always find that he has a sense of horror at the things that arise in his mind, and we see that they are not really his own thoughts. If he is not converted he does not distinguish between the demon and himself, as we find in the gospels. But also when he is converted, it is a proof that he has opened the door to the devil by sin, hidden sin it may be, or by negligence.

Further, Satan is the prince of this world, and its god, and he governs the world by means of the passions and lusts of men; and he is able to raise up the whole world against Christians, as he did against Christ, and so try their faith. He can seek to mingle truth and error, and thus deceive Christians if they are not spiritual; and also as the demon at Philippi did, to get Christians mixed up with the world in order to destroy the testimony of God; he can change himself into an angel of light, but "the spiritual man discerns all things." Satan has but little power over us, if we walk humbly, close to the Lord, following faithfully the word of God, having Christ as the only object of the heart. Satan knows well that he has been conquered; therefore it is said, "Resist the devil and he will flee from you." His influence in the world is very great through the motives of the human heart, and he acts on men through each other; likewise, from the rapidity of his operations and actions, he appears to be everywhere; and then he employs a great multitude of servants who are all wicked; but in fact he is not present everywhere. Now God is really present, and if we are under the influence of the Spirit of God, and the conscience is in the presence of God, Satan has no power. "He that is begotten of God keeps himself, and that wicked one touches him not." However things may be with us, if we are truly the children of God he will fulfil the counsels of God with respect to us; it may be by chastisement if need be. But God knows all things, He in the most absolute sense penetrates everywhere: He orders all things - Satan's efforts even - for our good; and if we are armed with the whole armour of God, the darts of the evil one do not reach the soul.

All along, he has been making mistakes to his own confusion, and will do so to the end. He cannot read men's hearts. "Thou only (O Lord God) knowest the hearts of all the children of men" (1 Kings 8:39 ). He has no spiritual discernment, and can neither understand the purposes of God nor the spiritual exercises of the saints of God; but he can form his own judgment by men's actions, and closely does he watch them. In Matt.4 he is called "the tempter," and there is little doubt that, in order to provoke to some form of self-will, he studies the natural propensities and personal weaknesses of every saint on earth as closely as he once studied Job and his circumstances. If he finds a believer proof, for the time, against self-gratification in a carnal way, he may try to ensnare him by what will lead to self-admiration in a religious way, or to self-exaltation in a popular way (see 1 John 2:16).

The devil, as you see here, can quote Scripture, and he can suppress Scripture; he can also pervert Scripture. How solemn to think of the subtlety of the great enemy of God and man! What force there is in the touching words of the apostle to his beloved Corinthians when he says, "But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtlety [i.e., craft], so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ." 2 Cor. 11:3. It is thus the wily foe deals with Scripture. He takes it, as it were, in his own hand, and craftily seeks to extinguish all in the scripture that would shed its own light upon the subject he desires to assail. The greatest comfort of my heart is, that he does not know my heart; and it would be intolerable to me if the only One who does know it did not know it. "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? I the Lord." Jer. 17:9-10.

But then Satan is a very jealous observer of your ways. He knows your tastes from observation. He knows what will act upon you; he knows, as it were, the fly you will rise at. This is what is solemn. I believe he is the most intelligent of creatures, but the most miserable. No creature could be more miserable than the devil, and he wants every one to be as miserable as himself. He studies everything; he looks at everything, and reads your character through your ways. Thank God, he does not know our hearts; only God knows them. Satan knows what is outside. He sees you, watches you; he knows, I repeat, what will take you. He studies you when you are little aware of it. Lord, grant that Thy saints may not be ignorant of his devices!

SATAN'S method in tempting. He observes the temper and constitution. Satan will not tempt contrary to the natural disposition and temperament: he makes the wind and tide go together; that way the natural tide of the heart runs, that way the wind of temptation blows. Though the devil cannot know men's thoughts, yet he knows their temper, and accordingly he lays his baits.

Satan observes the fittest time to tempt in; as a cunning angler casts in his angle when the fish will bite best. Satan's time of tempting is usually after an ordinance. When we have been at solemn duties, we are apt to think all is done, and we grow remiss, and leave off that zeal and strictness as before; just as a soldier, who after a battle leaves off his armour, not once dreaming of an enemy. Satan watches his time, and, when we least suspect, then he throws in a temptation.

Satan knows what orders thou keepest in thy house and closet; and though he has not a key to thy heart, yet he can stand in the next room to it, and lightly hear what is whispered there. If once he doth but smell which way thy heart inclines, he knows how to take the hint; if but one door is unbolted, here is advantage enough.

The occasion of temptation. The least passage of thy life may prove an occasion of sin to thee: at what a little wicket many times a great sin enters! David's eye did but casually light on Bathsheba, and the good man's foot was presently in the devil's trap: hast thou not then need to pray that God would set a guard about thy senses wherever thou goest, and to cry with him, "Keep back mine eyes from beholding vanity"?

The question may arise as to how it is that these spirits, if they are not the spirits of the dead, seem to know so much about those whom they impersonate? The Bible helps us as to this. From the Book of Job we learn that Satan had carefully considered Job; he knew his outward circumstances intimately, though he could not discern his motives, and in the same way we have no doubt these evil spirits make a study of men, and are able, as a result, to impersonate men. Satan spent his time, we learn, in going to and fro in the earth, and these restless spirits are like their leader. Hebrews 1:13-14 teaches us that the heirs of salvation are constantly cared for by angel ministers from God, and may it not be that these evil spirits also attach themselves to individuals, especially to those who know not God? If so, to speak of a person's 'evil angel' is more than a figure of speech; and this would certainly account for the knowledge that these spirits possess of those who are dead.

No man knows what is in another's mind. He may conjecture more or less accurately, but none of men can know inwardly what is in another's mind and has not been communicated to him. The spirit of the man himself knows, and no one else. It is shut out not only from animals inferior to man in the scale of creation, but from his fellows. So, but with incomparably greater force, no one can come to know the things of God, unless they be revealed: only the Spirit of God knows them. But here is the inestimable privilege of the Christian. It was not the spirit of the world we received, but the Spirit that is from God, and this expressly that we might know, inwardly know, the things freely given to us by God.

“But Satan, if there be such a being, cannot know everything.”

Not everything; but he knows a very great deal more than you think. Who told him that our first parents were forbidden to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Gen. 3:1)? Who told the demons that Jesus was the Son of God? (Mark 3:11). How did the devil know that Psalm 91:11-12, referred to Jesus? (Matt. 4:6). Your traffic with spiritism simply means that you have thrown down the gauntlet before the face of the powers of darkness, and have challenged them to combat, your cleverness matched with theirs. The issue of that trial should not be difficult to predict.