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Is Lucifer Satan’s Real Name?

Ask Pastor Alex, Ep. 20

This is the Ask Pastor Alex podcast with your host, Pastor Alex. All right, welcome back to the podcast, everyone.We’re here with another episode and another question.And the question for this episode is, is Satan’s real name Lucifer?Good question.And I just want to start by asking, what do you think?How would many of you answer this question?Would you say yes?Would you say no?Or would you say, I don’t know?Maybe you say, I don’t know.That’s the reason I submitted the question.So just get on answering it.And I am, I’m going to.But fun fact, as we start, did you know that there’s not one single place in all of scripture where Satan is called Lucifer?It’s true.You can do the research for yourself.And so the question is, well, how did the name Lucifer come to be associated with Satan?Well, you can thank a guy named Jerome for that.Jerome, also known as Saint Jerome, was a Christian priest and theologian and historian who lived in the fourth and fifth centuries AD.And he’s best known for his work in translating the Bible into Latin, which became known as the Latin Vulgate.And Jerome’s translation was highly, highly influential and became the standard version of the Bible for the Western Church for many centuries.Okay, so what does this have to do with Satan and the name Lucifer?Well, we’re getting to that.Just give me a second, okay?You see, the only place in all of scripture where our English Bibles use the word Lucifer Is in Isaiah 1412 and only in the King James Version and the New King James Version.In other English translations, Isaiah 1412 reads,How you were fallen from heaven, O day star, son of dawn,How you are cut down to the ground, You who laid the nations low.Now, the important phrase in that verse is, O day star, son of dawn.In the original Hebrew, the phrase is, Helal ben Shehar.And in Hebrew, Helal literally means morning star or day star.However, in the King James Version and in the New King James Version, Isaiah 1412 reads,How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning,How art thou cut down to the ground, Which didst weaken the nations.And in those versions, the word Lucifer is capitalized, indicating that it’s a propername.And that word Lucifer directly comes from the Latin Vulgate.You see, in Latin, the word Lucifer literally means lightbearer or morning star.And it was actually a reference to the planet Venus, which was visible early in the morning.And so when Jerome was translating the Hebrew Bible into Latin and came across Helal, he knew that it meant morning star.So if you’re translating from Hebrew into Latin and you come across a phrase or a word that means morning star, what do you do?Well, you find the appropriate Latin word that means morning star, which in this case is Lucifer.But he made sure not to capitalize the word because he knew that it was not a proper name.But the early English translations didn’t follow him on that.The early English translations of the Bible did begin to capitalize the name.And since many people believe that Isaiah 14 is about the fall of Satan, people began to believe that Satan’s real name is Lucifer.Now listen, I’m also aware of the fact that there is a show on TV right now called Lucifer.And I’ve never seen it, but it’s my understanding that the main character’s name is Lucifer Morning Star.So two things on this.One, it is a horrible and despicable idea to make a TV show idolizing the enemy of God.And no Christian should be watching that show.You should never have anything to do with something that is going to idolize the enemy of God.But two, it’s hilarious that the TV show and the producers did not even do the basic research to see how wrong and redundant that name is.It’s wrong because Satan’s name is not Lucifer.And it’s hilariously redundant because the name Lucifer Morning Star literally means Morning Star Morning Star.And they didn’t even do the research necessary to figure that out.So that’s how the word Lucifer came to be associated with Satan.And that’s why many people think that Satan’s actual real name is Lucifer.But it’s not.It’s just the Latin translation of the Hebrew word for Morning Star.You will find absolutely no place in all of scripture that ever refers to Satan as Lucifer.So that’s not his name.Don’t call him that.Don’t think that it’s his name.It’s just the result of what happened when they decided to capitalize a word that is not a proper name.And now it’s become associated with Satan ever since then.So really fun question.I appreciate the question and I look forward to answering more in the future.