Daily Meditation

Quenching Satan’s Darts

Ligonier Ministries

Satan is powerful. He is more powerful than we are. That is why we desperately need the armor of God. But as powerful as he is, he is far less powerful than God. That is why the Bible declares that greater is He who is in you (the Holy Spirit) than he who is in the world (Satan) (1 John 4:4). Satan’s darts are quenchable; God’s are not. You can flee the presence of Satan; you cannot flee the presence of God.

We must be wary of Satan’s right and left fists. He is a kick-boxer as well. Just when we shield ourselves from his hands, he cheats and uses his feet. Here his guile is most effective.

One characteristic of Satan is his metamorphic power. He has the cunning and uncanny ability to appear under the auspices of good. He can transform himself into the appearance of an angel of light. You don’t find him so much in the Saddam Husseins of this world. He is not so crass. He appears as a saint, a paragon of virtue, waiting to seduce you.

He is, above all, a fraud. His work is anti-Christ not merely in the sense of working against Christ but in the sense of seeking to act as a substitute for Christ.

The good news about Satan is this: his doom is sure, and one little word will fell him.

Coram Deo

Think about ways Satan has deceived you in times past as an “angel of light.” Ask God to make you more perceptive to his deception in the future.

Passages for Further Study

Ephesians 6:10-17

Daily Meditation

Recognizing Satan’s Reality

Ligonier Ministries

I once asked a college philosophy class, “How many of you believe in God?” Out of thirty students, twenty-seven raised their hands in the affirmative; three abstained.

Then I asked, “How many of you believe in Satan as a personal reality?” This time the vote was reversed.

I pursued my inquiry. I asked, “Why do you believe in a supernatural being who has the capacity to influence us for good (God) and not in a supernatural personal being who has the capacity to influence us for evil (Satan)?” Their answers indicated that the Devil they were rejecting was what they perceived to be a nonexistent mythical caricature.

Many qualified their positions by saying, “I do believe in the reality of an impersonal force of evil in the world.” I found this response fascinating. I asked them, “How can an impersonal force be evil?”

What is this mysterious impersonal force? Cosmic dust? Radioactivity? Impersonal objects, forces, or powers can be many things. One thing they cannot be is morally evil. Here the attempt to be modern and sophisticated becomes an exercise in intellectual regression.

Coram Deo

Do you believe Satan is a personal reality? Why do you believe as you do? How has your belief affected your response to him?

Passages for Further Study

Romans 12:21
Matthew 12:43–45

Daily Meditation

Facing Double Jeopardy

Ligonier Ministries

“If the right hand doesn’t get you, then the left one will.” This maxim expresses the double jeopardy faced by a prizefighter in the boxing ring. Like the ambidextrous pugilist, our adversary, Satan, has a two-pronged strategy. To defeat him, we must wage war on two fronts. The tactic is simple. He conquers by spreading disinformation about himself. He divides the church by creating two myths, two erroneous views of his own identity: The first is that he is a myth. The second is that he is as powerful as God.

The first deception from Satan about Satan is that he is a ridiculous myth. As a mythical figure, he can be put in the category of goblins, ghosts, and things that go bump in the night. Nothing pleases Satan more than to persuade people that he doesn’t exist at all.

If we are convinced that Satan doesn’t exist, we will hardly waste time preparing to make war against him or find ways to resist him. To put on armor to ward off imaginary fiery darts is as much a fool’s errand as Don Quixote’s tilting at windmills. On the other hand, a stealth bomber can have its way, unimpeded in its mission, if the enemy is persuaded that there is no such thing as a stealth bomber.

Satan loves the modern image of himself. Who gives credence to an ugly little imp in red flannel underwear with cloven feet and horns, bearing a trident and flashing a diabolical grin?

Coram Deo

What has been your perception of Satan in the past? How has this perception affected your response to him? To God?

Passages for Further Study

1 Peter 5:8
2 Corinthians 11:14
Revelation 20:2

Daily Meditation

Quenching Satan’s Darts

Ligonier Ministries

Satan is powerful. He is more powerful than we are. That is why we desperately need the armor of God. But as powerful as he is, he is far less powerful than God. That is why the Bible declares that greater is He who is in you (the Holy Spirit) than he who is in the world (Satan) (1 John 4:4). Satan’s darts are quenchable; God’s are not. You can flee the presence of Satan; you cannot flee the presence of God.

We must be wary of Satan’s right and left fists. He is a kick-boxer as well. Just when we shield ourselves from his hands, he cheats and uses his feet. Here his guile is most effective.

One characteristic of Satan is his metamorphic power. He has the cunning and uncanny ability to appear under the auspices of good. He can transform himself into the appearance of an angel of light. You don’t find him so much in the Saddam Husseins of this world. He is not so crass. He appears as a saint, a paragon of virtue, waiting to seduce you.

He is, above all, a fraud. His work is anti-Christ not merely in the sense of working against Christ but in the sense of seeking to act as a substitute for Christ.

The good news about Satan is this: his doom is sure, and one little word will fell him.

Coram Deo

Think about ways Satan has deceived you in times past as an “angel of light.” Ask God to make you more perceptive to his deception in the future.

Passages for Further Study

Ephesians 6:10-17

Daily Meditation

Make Satan Know His Defeat

Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. (James 4:7)

John H. Piper

The more real Satan appears in our day, the more precious the victory of Christ will become to those who believe him.

The New Testament teaches that when Christ died and rose again Satan was defeated. A time of limited freedom is granted to him, but his power against God's people is broken and his destruction is sure.

“The Son of God appeared to destroy the works of the devil.” (1 John 3:8)

“Christ took on human nature that through death he might destroy him who has the power of death, that is, the devil.” (Hebrews 2:14) *“God disarmed the principalities and powers and made a public example of them, triumphing over them in him.” (Colossians 2:15)

In other words the decisive blow was struck at Calvary. And one day, when Satan's time of limited freedom is over, Revelation 20:10 says, “The devil . . . [will be] thrown into the lake of fire and brimstone . . . and will be tormented day and night for ever and ever.”

What does this mean for those of us who follow Jesus Christ?

“There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” (Romans 8:1)

“Who shall bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies!” (Romans 8:33)

“Neither angels nor principalities nor powers nor anything else shall separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ.” (Romans 8:38)

“He who is in us is stronger than he who is in the world.” (1 John 4:4)

“We conquer him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of our testimony.” (Revelation 12:11)

Therefore, “Resist the devil, and he will flee from you!” He has been defeated, and we have been given victory. Our task now is to live in that victory and make Satan know his defeat.

Man's Inhumanity to Man, Part II

Satan's Emissaries

The history of Burma (Myanmar) provides a case study in cruelty and man's inhumanity to man.  Part I canvassed British colonial inhumanity to the native Burmese tribes.  Ironically, British "civilised" cruelty was little different to the capricious personality cults of many Burmese kings in previous centuries.  

The twentieth century witnessed a global explosion of repressive, totalitarian regimes.  Millions upon millions lost their lives, sacrificed upon the altar of secularist ideologies (Mao, Hitler, Lenin/Stalin, Pol Pot).  The Killing Fields were liberally irrigated by the blood of  millions of sacrificial victims to cult of Man as God.  Burma has been one of the longest running totalitarian regimes.  Now, it appears, even its dark times may be coming to an end.  Its repressive military regime is one of the last to survive--along with North Korea.

This is not to imagine, of course, that there are no repressive regimes left upon earth.  One only has to glance at Islamic authoritarian states (Saudi Arabia, Iran, Palestinian Authority, ISIS) to see brutal injustice continuing its work.  But the size and scale of the repression in Burma  and North Korea have taken human deification to another level entirely.

Emma Larkin describes the tender embraces of Insein Prison in Yangon, a place of fearsome repression, torture, and human suffering.

It's Personal, Always

. . . And In the Darkness Bind Them

We have recently been reading through Matthew Dickerson's A Hobbit Journey: Discovering the Enchantment of J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle Earth (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2012).  Dickerson is an example of the growing coterie of Tolkien scholars whose work is making  the Tolkien corpus more and more accessible to modern readers.

There are many biblical and theological themes woven into Tolkien's work.  One of them is the nature of evil itself.  Tolkien rightly sees that evil is personal, a will of malice and hatred towards others.  Evil is not a mere impersonal misfortune that might occur from time to time.  It is a living will which desires the enslavement of all others.  Behind all evil acts, deeds, and schemes stands a living person of immense malice: subtle and cruel beyond our reckoning.  The very subtlety of its exercise makes the malice more evil and more cruel.

Tolkien's representation of evil is consistent with Scriptural teaching, where Satan's malice is revealed in such a way that--were it not for our Saviour  delivering us from his realm--we would all be subject to an eternal bitterness and a bondage to an immensely evil creature who hates us utterly.

Douglas Wilson's Letter From Moscow

No Shantytown Kingdom

Tuesday, November 3, 2015 

By Douglas Wilson 

Blog&Mablog

The entire world of unbelief lies under the sway of the wicked one. Given how the god of unbelief operates — which is through accusation — it should not be surprising what kind of energy makes the system go. That energy lies in the strength of accusation. The devil is an accuser, accusing the saints day and night before the throne (Rev. 12:10). The name Satan means adversary, and he makes his accusations from behind the bench of a pretended righteousness.

And a very indignant form of righteousness it is too.

Satanic religion is not a matter of severed goat heads, or guttering candles on the floor of some goth teenager’s bedroom. Satanic religion is self-righteous, and aspires to be holier than God (2 Cor. 11:15). When Satan tempted the Lord, one of the ways he did it was by showing him all the kingdoms of this world and their glory (Matt. 4:8). The devil was not in charge of some shantytown kingdom.

Satan's "Finest" Creation

All Is Well

Co-incidental surveys have been conducted in New Zealand and the United States showing that "religion" amongst the population is declining.  In our capital city, Wellington a survey has reported that fifty percent of people deny the existence of any god whatsoever.  This is not at all surprising.  New Zealand is one of the most secular countries in the world.  Similarly the number of Unbelievers is reported to be increasing in the United States.

None of this catches us by surprise.  Atheistic secularism is Satan's last throw of the dice, his greatest and most powerful achievement, as it were.  When a country is oppressed with evil spirits, evil is tangible.  It is felt. Fear--genuine, righteous fear--drives many people to Christ.  But the culture most under the control of the Great Dissembler, the Liar from the beginning, is the culture which denies the very existence of  the Devil.

Vern Poythress puts it this way:

Pearls Before Swine

Choosing This Day Whom to Serve

Over at NZ Conservative umbrage is rightly being taken at the effrontery of a secular humanist politician presuming to cast himself in the role of a spokesman for the Christ.  The matter at hand is Green politician, Russel Norman having the chutzpah to tell us what Jesus thought and taught about homosexuality and marriage.

[Colin Craig] says he's Christian, well, Jesus Christ - if he believed in anything, he believed in love, tolerance and inclusion, not the politics of hatred that Colin Craig is promoting [...] Colin Craig should apologize to all new Zealanders for his disgusting and offensive comments. Let's live in a society of tolerance and inclusion - and love. That, surely, is what the Christian message, interpreted the best way, is all about"

Whom does Norman represent here?

Cosmic Warfare, Part II

The Exhilaration and the Scandal

The early Christians understood they were involved in a cosmic battle between the forces of evil--forces which were personal, albeit finite, yet much more powerful than they--and the newly enthroned King of all kings, the Lord Jesus Christ.  They understood that when they were converted to Christ out of paganism both they and their households were delivered from captivity to Satan to a captivity to Christ.  But captivity to Christ meant untrammelled goodness and blessing; it meant abundant, eternal life. 

Modern Christians, deeply influenced by the prevailing secular materialism of the West, tend to gloss over expressions in Scripture which teach just such a cosmology of redemption.  David Bentley Hart summarises the biblical perspective of the cosmological battle:

Cosmic Warfare, Part I

Spitting at the Devil, Swearing Allegiance to Christ

The cosmic implications of baptism have been sadly occluded in our modern times.  This is a grave weakness in our contemporary understanding of the Christian faith.  Secularism has demoted and devalued the cosmic invisible realities in the mind of many Christians.  Even as the Bible speaks of the "powers of the air" and traces their demonic connections, we are more comfortable with material causes and effects. 

David Bentley Hart describes the ritual of baptism in the early Church--how it enacted the real cosmic battle and drama.

Praying for Islamic Lands

Breaking Satan's Ostensible Iron Grip

Christians are not allowed to preach the Gospel in Islamic lands. Under Islamic law, if an Islamic person converts and becomes a Christian he automatically attracts the death penalty. Satan holds these nations in a terrible grip, shutting up the people in a dark prison, effectively preventing them from hearing the Gospel.

Christians everywhere ought to pray with great boldness and strong faith that this oppression and tragedy will stop. In Revelation 20: 1--3 we are told that the Dragon, the Serpent of old, who is the Devil and Satan has been thrown into the abyss so that he should not "deceive the nations any longer."

According to David Chilton, (The Days of Vengeance, p. 502) most Reformed scholars agree that this refers to Satan's inability to prevent the message of the Gospel from achieving success. Satan's opposition to the Gospel takes many forms. When he so controls a state or a people that the very law of the land outlaws the Gospel and prevents it from being heard by anyone, Christians have a biblical warrant boldly to remind the Lord that Satan has been bound and in the light of that to be praying very specifically that this travesty be brought to an end speedily.

How it will happen is beyond our ken. But, as ever, the Lord moves in mysterious ways His wonders to perform. We ought to take no rest, and give Him not rest until He does this. (Isaiah 62:6,7)

Doug Wilson's Letter From America

The Current Unholy Trinity of Unbelief

The Deep Things of Satan

Douglas Wilson
Sunday, January 10, 2010

This secular age has an unholy trinity, an attempt to counterfeit the place that the triune God holds in the world as it actually is. This, to be distinguished from the world that these bunglers are trying to fashion right in front of us.

Their father wants power, their son wants to be the incarnation of lust, and their spirit wants to muddle everything. And thus we have the collectivist state, the demands of sodomy, and the confusions of postmodernism. These three things conspire together to make, for you, a brave new world. If you want to understand the focus of my writing, there it is. They have their unholy trinity; I have three targets.

Stages of Holy War

When Was Satan Cast Down?

David Chilton, commenting upon Revelation 12: 7--12:

And there was war in heaven, Michael and His angels waging war with the Dragon. And the Dragon and his angels waged war, and they were not strong enough, and there was no longer any place found for them in heaven. And the great Dragon was thrown down, the Serpent of old who is called the devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world; he was thrown down to the Land, and his angels were thrown down with him. Revelation 12: 7-9

When, therefore, did Satan fall from heaven? He fell, definitively, during the ministry of Christ, culminating in the atonement, resurrection, and the ascension of the Lord to His heavenly throne. We can see the stages of the Holy War throughout the message of the Gospels.

Whereas the activity of demons seems relatively rare in the Old Testament, the New Testament records numerous outbreaks of demonism. Open the pages of the New Testament, and demons are almost inescapable. Why? What made the difference? It was the presence of Christ. He went on the offensive, entering history to do battle with the Dragon, and immediately the Dragon counter-attacked, fighting back with all his might, wreaking as much havoc as possible.

And when we see the Lord warring against the devil, we also see Him being given angelic assistance (Matthew 4: 11; 26:53; Luke 22: 43). As Michael leading the angels, Christ led His apostles against the Dragon, driving him out of his position. The message of the Gospels is that in the earthly ministry of Christ and His disciplines, Satan lost his place of power and fell down to the earth. . . .

The definitive accomplishment of this, of course, was Christ's atonement for the sins of His people; thus, just before He offered up Himself as the sacrifice, our Lord said: "Now judgment is upon this world; now the ruler of this world shall be thrown out" (John 12:31) In Christ's victory, salvation and the Kingdom came to earth. Satan was defeated. . . .

The message of Revelation is consistent with that of the New Testament as a whole: Christ has arrived, Satan has been thrown down, and the Kingdom has come. By His death and resurrection, Christ "disarmed" the demons, triumphing over them (Colossians 2:15). Satan has been rendered powerless (Hebrews 2: 14--15), and so St Paul was able to assure the believers in Rome that "the God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet" (Romans 16: 20). The Cross was the mark, Jesus said, of the judgment of the world (John 12: 31)--or, as John Calvin rendered it, the reformation and restoration of the world.
David Chilton, The Days of Vengeance, p. 316f)

Douglas Wilson's Letter From America

The Devil You Say

Expository - Exegetical Fragments
Written by Douglas Wilson
Wednesday, March 16, 2011

It is initially curious to some that fundamentalists will say, in their statements of faith, that they believe in a personal devil. At first glance it might appear to be a statement about the inspiration of the Bible -- since the devil is such an obvious reality in Scripture, and since the liberals were engaged in denying the authority of Scripture, this would be a good litmus test to detect any incipient liberalism. And it is a good litmus test. The devil is obviously more than a vague miasma.

And so put me down with the fundies as believing in a personal devil, and in a real Hell. At the same time, this is a subject where a lot of extrabiblical traditions have gotten mixed in with what the Bible teaches. Here are just few areas where we need to look more closely.

First, the devil is not God's opposite. God has no opposite. To affirm this is to fall into a kind of Manichean dualism, with two eternal principles at war with each other -- good and evil. As Lewis points out, the devil is a fallen creature, and if he has an opposite it would be someone like the archangel Michael.

Second, the common conflation of names for him has to be carefully reviewed. Satan and Lucifer are common enough, but the biblical case there is tenuous. Possible, but tenuous. Beelzebub and Belial are others. We tend to lump them all together, and we might be right. But we might not.

Third, he is not mentioned by name in the account of our first parents, but his presence there is implied. In Genesis, he is the "serpent." But his presence there is confirmed by statements in the New Testament. John tells that he was involved in instigating the murder of Abel by Cain. In Revelation, he is called "that ancient dragon." And in Romans, Paul applies to Satan the prophecy that was made against the serpent in Gen. 3:15. May the God of peace soon crush Satan beneath your feet.

Fourth, he is not the king of Hell. Jesus is the king of Hell. The lake of fire was prepared for the devil and his angels. Contrary to popular cartoons, demons are not the jailers and tormentors in Hell, but are among the tormented.

Fifth, this place of final torment is Gehenna, Hell, the lake of fire. It is not Hades, the intermediate place of the dead, called Sheol in the Old Testament. In Revelation, we are told that death and Hades are thrown into the lake of fire. Jesus, as the Creed accurately tells us, descended into Hades. He did not descend into Gehenna.
Sixth, the fact that the devil is a personal devil, having a genuine independent reality, does not keep him from being a spirit. He is the prince of the power of the air. The ability of demons to possess a man, as in the case of Legion, and numerous other New Testament examples, means that the structure of a devil's personal identity is conducive to linking up with the spirit of a man. Where does the devil live? What is a conducive environment for him? He lives in the cloud of envy and accusation that the unconverted human heart so easily generates.

And last, the devil and his angels were definitively thrown down from their position of power in the death of Jesus. As Colossians tells us, Jesus triumphed over them by His death. We are told in Hebrews that Jesus, through His death, destroyed him who had the power of death, that is the devil. But the fact that the devil was defeated in the cross does not mean that he was vaporized in the cross. He had his ability to deceive the nations taken away, thus making way for the fulfilment of the Great Commission. But after his defeat on the cross, in the pages of the New Testament, we still find him active -- Paul says we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers.