Introduction
Let’s get something straight before we begin. There is a great misconception in the world about the Devil. It seems as if the world’s view or image of the devil is misconstrued and misunderstood. The world portrays the Devil as a chubby red baby with horns and a tail holding a pitchfork. This image originated over time, which I will provide a brief background of in the next section, but the image that the Bible describes as the Evil One doesn’t appear too evil to the public eye. It is an attempt to soften the sharp edges and make the image look less threatening, so that the devil would appear more attractive. It is a marketing tactic of the Devil that works and invites many to come. Alternatively, the other extreme would be images of the Devil as a significant, beast-like figure with huge horns and fire shooting out of its mouth. It can be a terrifying image if we were to stand in front of such a large monster. Yet again, this tactic is used by the Devil to deceive and lure people away from God and toward himself. 
Some will imagine the Devil being this horrifying and run far from it, while others may find attraction to such demonic creatures and have images of death and skulls all around their personal items. Some find fascination with death and evil alluring. But this is short-lived because no one can retain a love for the Devil without eventually realizing the Devil is not their friend. Soon after, those who find fascination with the Devil will truly see him for the evil and ugliness he is inside. All other images we can conjure up can be rounded up alongside Hollywood’s best horror flicks. Some people blindly follow him willingly, thinking he has all the supreme powers and authorities in the underworld. Hollywood tends to categorize the spiritual realm into two distinct categories: good versus evil.
The good is in constant battle with the evil for the souls of men. Correct me if I’m wrong, but this sounds very self-inflated and men-centered. The powers of good and evil are at war over us to win our souls to join the good side or the bad side. Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings, and Avengers are all good examples of how Hollywood preaches its theology of God and the Devil. The Yin and Yang of the spiritual realm are at war, and we are in the middle of it. This view is incorrect and, if followed, will lead to a twisted understanding of theology. The Bible is obvious in what it teaches. Heaven and Hell are not at war with each other, and Earth is in the middle. No!
Jesus on the cross declared, “It is finished!” with a loud cry. He won the war on the cross. Death and the Devil have been defeated. However, the Devil wants you to continue believing the war continues, and we are battling on either side. The more he has deceived you, the more he can warp your understanding and theology. Sure, there may be battles here and there from time to time, just as in the natural world, but the war is over. Any demon acting like there is still a war going on is like the insurgents who, after losing their leader, start a faction to continue fighting, thinking they will take over the headship. Where else would you see such prideful acts other than coming from those who originated pride? The Devil is not in the business of recruitment, but removal. He is out to destroy as many lives as possible to hurt God, and as we proceed to uncover the many hidden layers of this wicked beast, we will discover the authentic masks he wears, and with this knowledge comes wisdom to avoid.
Back to the Garden of Eden
The devil has been using many tactics and devices to cause people to fall from God. His goal is to take as many souls with him as possible. Every soul that follows him is another soul that God’s heart breaks for. You see, the devil cannot hurt God directly, but he can hurt God where it hurts, his love for sinners. This does not leave God at a disadvantage, no. This leads God to make a plan of salvation that cannot be thwarted or changed. God’s plan worked, and the devil knows it. He is on a rampage to confuse as many followers as possible to leave the faith. He desires to take all of creation under his control. Remember, he wanted to be like God, which is what cast him down. His goal is to destroy the mustard seed faith within you, not to believe, and call all this some mythology or fantasy.
We live in a world of abundant information sources. We can obtain detailed information about almost anything in the world. When cancer strikes, we have teams of scientists examining and studying the cancer cell to understand its behavior and the harm it causes to the body. 
We have teams of military personnel that strategize and plan to either prevent or proceed with war activities. In The Art of War by Sun Tzu, the first strategic tactic to fight an enemy (Military Strategy) is to Know Your Enemy (Tzu 2018). Intelligence is crucial before the battle, and knowing your enemy, as well as knowing yourself, must be the first act. However, unfortunately, many of us are unaware that we are in the midst of a battle and have no idea that there is an enemy. We tend to believe our enemy is ourselves, or others around us, who cause us grief and pain. But deep inside, we all at times feel like God is our enemy. Why? Because when bad things happen to good people, our first reaction is to blame God for it. Why did you allow this? What did I do wrong? Why is this happening? All these questions are directed towards God and not the Devil. Our inquiry is to God because God is the ultimate authority and Being. We know this, and we tend to blame the person at the top.
The notion of blaming God originates from the Garden of Eden (Genesis 3). Adam and Eve fell into sin, and when confronted by God for what they had done, their initial reaction was to blame someone else, even God, as long as it was not their fault. This was not automatic and would not have happened apart from the leading and tempting of the Devil. Did you ever ask yourself why the Devil may have tempted Eve before Adam? Some like to say that because women are weaker than men, the Devil attacked the weaker one. 
However, this strategy contradicts the common tactic of targeting the leader or head of the group. When the leader falls, the morale and psychology of the followers are greatly impacted, and disruption occurs. This does not lead to blaming God but to blaming the devil as the source of the evil. The Devil is out to deceive Adam and Eve permanently in a way that all their offspring will follow in suit. He was not after just the first two people. He was after all of us and succeeded. We are all under the deception of the devil’s lies. Others would say the Devil went after Eve first because she was created after Adam, and she did not know the laws of God. She heard the laws from a second-hand source, Adam. It was clear she had heard the law, as evidenced by her recitation of it back to the Devil (Gen 3:2). However, her words are not accurate because she adds to God’s stipulation beyond what He had commanded. The devil knew she was ignorant of the Words of God and took advantage of that ignorance to deceive her. But to go with this argument, we have to conclude that Eve may have known the law but did not believe it fully with her heart, for if she had believed God’s word handed down to her by Adam, who did receive it directly. She would not have eaten the fruit from the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil (Gen. 3:6). This still does not answer why the Devil went after Eve rather than Adam, who was the head of the household.
There may be other viewpoints on why the Devil attacked Eve first, but we know it was not an arbitrary act of the Devil. He had this one moment, one opportunity to strike at all of humankind with one blow. What tactic would he use? His tactics were a strategy that played perfectly into his plans. His tactic was to use them against each other and ultimately use them against God. What greater method is there to destroy the enemy than using their own vices and evil against themselves? It is an act of self-destruction on the part of Adam and Eve. Eve fell for the deception, believed the serpent’s lies, and caused her husband to join in on her sin. Satan had Eve do the work for him. He did not have to tempt Adam, for Adam was tempted by the one creature that most identified with him, the woman. 
She was not only part of Adam, but also resembled him more than any other animal in the world. Adam and Eve identified with each other, and it would be hard to abandon each other, for they only had each other. Satan’s plan worked. Eve sinned and tempted Adam to sin with her. Side note: Some men may want to take this point and say it was the woman’s fault for all the sins in the world. Before you start making short-sighted claims, if the roles were reversed, do you really think that Adam would have resisted? Knowing how beautiful and compatible Eve was to him, do you really believe that Adam would walk away and say, “Oh, Woman, too bad you messed up. I told you not to eat it.” I will go as far as to say it would have been too easy for the Devil to tempt Adam and have him tempt Eve to fall. In fact, the reason he didn’t is proof that it would not have worked. Regardless, Eve was the first one tempted, and this was not because she was weak. The more likely answer is that she was the one who would be more difficult to tempt, and the Art of War strategies state that you attack the stronger one first. We can see this in the world today. More men are capable of committing adultery and leaving their wives because their desires are weaker, and their emotions are easily swayed. More women are in committed relationships, and they are the ones holding the family together. Women are more emotionally sensitive but have more control over their emotions than men. This is why more men are incarcerated in prison for acting out in violence due to a heightened emotional state. Of course, there are exceptions on both sides, but the majority behave in such ways. Let’s entertain the thought that Adam was tempted first and then tempted his wife.
First off, Adam would be in greater sin because he is the one who received the Word from God directly. For him to deny God’s Word would have been a graver sin. So Satan, knowing it would be more difficult to deceive Adam because He directly received the Word, went after Eve, who indirectly received it. I recall playing a telephone game in my youth, where all the children sat in two rows, facing forward. It was the responsibility of the last student to pass along a message to the first student by whispering into the ear of the student right in front. Then that student would whisper the secret message to the kid in front and so on, until the message reaches the intended recipient. Then, the first student in the two rows, whoever received the message first, was to stand up and quickly blurt out the entire message to the whole group before the other row. There was no fail.
The message somehow always ended in a jumbled mess of random gibberish. As the message is passed down, it changes. God clearly told Adam not to eat of the tree. Adam told Eve, his wife, Don’t eat or even touch the tree, lest you die. Why do I assume Adam passed the “don’t touch” portion of the message from God? Because God never told Adam that he could not eat the fruit of the tree. God only said not to eat of it. Well, then, why couldn’t Eve have added that touch? Because Eve was the recipient of the message passed down from God to Adam, and finally to her. The likelihood that Eve added that portion does not make sense due to the Second laws of thermodynamics, entropy.
The Second Law of Thermodynamics states that everything tends to form from order to disorder, from creation to chaos. If this law is correct, then the message handed down from God was unadulterated and pure. Adam took the Word and added to it to protect and preserve his only wife. His intentions were pure, but his methods were incorrect. He was not to add to God’s command, for that would make Adam’s command supersede God’s command. Adam was to obey God’s command and preserve His Word. 
We are not to add to or take away from God’s Word, ever (Rev. 22:18-19). Eve mistakenly added to God’s Word and thus revealed her ignorance of God’s Word. This is most likely why the Serpent attacked Eve first. He was aware of her ignorance, not due to her fault, as I mentioned earlier, and took advantage of that fact. The greater question to ask is why Adam intentionally ate the fruit, knowing it was evil. But we will save that for another article. This does not excuse either party’s part in the original sin, but it does reveal the method and tactics the serpent used to overthrow and cause the two superlative created beings made in the image of God. Not even angels are given this privilege. Satan was lower than Adam and Eve, yet he was able to turn the tables and move above mankind. Today, we see this as a battle between good and evil, yin and yang, light and dark. These are philosophies that view life from a lower hierarchical perspective. Through Christ, we have moved above the angelic beings, and not with Christ at the right hand of God the Father (Heb 2:6-9).
