As one fellow astutely pointed out when looking for exposition it’s a good idea to take into account who is giving it. So you would be justified to seek comments from those who believe rather than just those who don’t as some do.
This is pertinent to the thread because in Scripture we do find Satan quoting Psalm 91 when he took Christ to the pinnacle of the temple and told Him to throw Himself down because God would give the angels charge of him up that they would lift him up lest he strike his foot against a stone.
Commenters generally agree that this was quoted to encourage Christ that He didn’t have to go the route of suffering, that (as I put it) He could save the Jews, of them, without the Cross. This second temptation followed the temptation to take care of yourself and preceded what I’d describe as universal salvation for all humans if you just honor me.
But that aside, I would suggest the idea that Satan’s exposition of Scripture isn’t gonna be one you should listen to. Here’s Psalm 91:
… and if you read it it may look like it says those who really trust in God – and who would trust in God more than Christ? – are going to have a proverbial hedge around them … and that’s the way that Satan applies the Scripture; but, in the text itself there is that mention of “trouble” that should alert a reader that the simplest take isn’t the right take.
Realize the idea that there’s a hedge around “the faithful”, if you take that to its logical extreme, would lead to a complementary idea that people have troubles because they aren’t faithful … but that idea can be easily refuted by the book of Job, where Job’s frenemies use it to underscore their arguments about why Job is suffering. God’s response to them was …
“After the LORD had said these things to Job, he said to Eliphaz the Temanite, “I am angry with you and your two friends, because you have not spoken the truth about me, as my servant Job has.”
Well, what were they saying again and again as Job lamented of how bad they were as comforters? People suffer in life because they’re guilty. What did Job say by comparison? “The Lord gives and the Lord takes away.”
Luke 21 has similar language to Psalm 91 but the contrast is more clear because though it says not a hair of your head will perish it says that right after saying some will be killed for their faith.
It is said that on the street questioning of unbelievers as to why they don’t believe it is not uncommon that suffering is given as the reason for why they don’t believe. But, speaking in this context, whose exposition are they listening to in order to make that the breaking point? Of course they aren’t literally listening to Satan sitting at the table over a shared morning eats (or whatever) but the idea that a just God would prevent the innocent suffering is one that is very, very old … and it is actually one rejected by Scripture.
So what is really being promised if it’s not to escape troubles, to be protected from suffering? Luke 21:19 say something that seems enigmatic but I think is important: “In your patience possess ye your souls.”
It’s been said that worry is prayer to the wrong god. I’ve said in this thread that we could look at many things as if God were asking us “do you trust Me?” even though we may not understand why. All the good things that might possess us, our wealth, our patriotism, our friends, our families, even our own skins … rather than us posses them … so that we can become consumed by panic at even the thought of their loss are also things we can turn over to God.
Psalms 91 doesn’t deny that bad things, troubles, happen any more than Luke 21 speaks about believers somehow just skating through real horrors as if they couldn’t happen if you were really, really trusting God, or if you were a good person or reckoned innocent by other people.
That’s how Satan would misuse them.
Instead the word “perish” in Luke has significance. God keeps safe those who cling to Him, who they really are, even if they lose all the things that they should possess but which too frequently end up possessing them. And trusting the Lord, depending on Him, is the patience that lets people possess their souls.
Christianity is as far as I know unique in that God is said to have gone from being the only god and almighty creator to a fragile mortal, from (showing the influence of eastern philosophy here) the embodiment and summation of enlightened to just a body, and to face terrible suffering that requires courage to face it and that the suffering is there that glory might increase.
As far as I know the Jewish Scriptures are the only scriptures that have an Isaiah 53.
So why is Satan tolerated?
Well, earlier on I suggested that if God deals with the chief rebel He would have to deal with all the rebels following that guy too, and just now some of those rebels will yet can still turn to God in Christ and be glorified … so it gets put off.
But on another level God may just be at odds with that old Brothers Gibb song, for though it was Satan’s joke that started the whole world crying it was Christ’s death that let them have a chance to live.
That the bad things in the world which men have freely done of their own wills, great evil things by intent and not just result as if they were oopses, and, yeah, those too, things which the Lord never intended but did permit, are because all things work for the good of those who love the Lord is going to result in consequences we don’t yet see and it is those consequences that matter.
So at least in that the song would be sorta accurate, the joke is on Satan. But Satan’s end will be a footnote in eternity. Possibly even anticlimactic. Just like when the Antichrist and False Prophet muster armies to war on Christ but are grabbed and thrown unceremoniously into the Lake of Fire alone for a long time. A literal, oh, you’re still here, well toddle off moment.
In the meantime it’s okay to ask why, just remember that Man’s interest and God’s are not necessarily the same. As when Peter rebuked Christ that He should die and Jesus called him by another name than Peter.
