Satan Flares Up

Satan Flares Up

The Devil’s schemes throughout history to stop the Messiah

Khen Lim | Kledang Community Chapel

December 8 2019

Image source: latrogenicaddiction.wordpress.com

The fight between good and evil has been going on for as long as man has been alive. And the fight has only worsened in recent years.

Take for example, the Americans. Our friends across the Atlantic have been having trouble telling good apart from bad government. If it weren’t for God’s intervention in November 2016, Hillary Clinton would have by now completely destroyed the United States of America. Only because of His hand, the overwhelming prediction of a Clinton shoo-in was itself swept aside. 

And in its place, Donald J. Trump, a leader God chose but man finds pleasure in despising till today. Yet Americans miss the big picture – that another eight years of torrid moral abandonment had been avoided.

Of course, it isn’t just America. Our British friends have not been having it easy also. Six months before Trump clinched the presidency, the British voted to leave the European Union in what is today popularly referred to as ‘Brexit.’ 

Now that the exit date of March 2019 is long gone, the liberals and socialists’ fight to overturn Brexit has just intensified. This is a move that is morally against the will of the people who voted to leave the E.U. but it was also one that cost Teresa May her prime ministership. Boris Johnson, the man who replaced May is fighting for his political survival as he struggles to steer the U.K. safely towards Brexit.

Two years after Brexit and Trump, Malaysia finally turned the tables on kleptocracy and decades of high crime by tossing out the political party that had long overstayed its welcome. Succumbing to the will of a deeply unhappy populace, the people voted for an untried combination of opposition political forces to steer the country through rough waters and into transparency, accountability and integrity. But it has been anything but smooth sailing.

Right from the get-go, it was never going to be straightforward. The bad dug its heels and despite a breathtaking slew of charges against the top most corrupt political leaders plus the hunt for the key players of the infamous 1MDB scandal, their undermining of the integrity of a considerably inexperienced government has so far proven very effective.

Elsewhere throughout the world, the battle between the good and the bad doesn’t look good as well. In this troubled world we live in, hope appears to fade at a worrying pace. In every corner, the situation is bleak.

Virtually the whole of Africa is forever in trouble. South Africa’s Johannesburg continues to have the unenviable reputation of being the rape capital of the world. 



The 2019 Hong Kong protests (Image source: The Independent)

The various nations in Asia’s Far East continue to have to look over their shoulders at the menacing totalitarian communist giant that is now the world’s second largest economy. Of late, Hong Kong has been trying to stand boldly on their principles of democracy against communism’s largest – and most brutal – example but it doesn’t bode well.

Meanwhile in south Asia, India and Pakistan are forever bickering and skirmishing with each other over their shared borders. To the north, South Korea not only has to contend with their northern neighbours but also Japan. And of course, Taiwan will always feel like a scythe over their heads amidst the perpetual threat from China.

Europe is of course spiralling out of control. Their social experiment and increasingly uncontrollable migration fallout are fast showing signs of being a complete disaster. 

Across in Latin America, Venezuela is holding on to a thread with its economy reeling into hyper-inflation. So long as socialism remains in control, it’s basically teetering on a complete humanitarian crisis. Bolivia is now facing a national rebuilding, having chased out their socialist dictator who was given exile by the Mexican government.

In the Middle East, military threats are a constant feature of the landscape. As the only democratic nation there, Israel bears the brunt of anti-Semitism from around the world and looming economic sanctions of all kinds. 

Across both ends of their borders, threats of annihilation come from the Gazans and Palestinians on one side and also the Syrians, Iranians and Iraqis on the other. There’s also the small matter of the Iranians now finalising their nuclear program, which means at least one warhead will be ready to destroy the Jewish State.

In all of what we can see and read about, the world is reeling from the devastating effects of Satan’s interference. His deadly schemes have produced a wide variety of outcomes: enmity among warring nations for territorial conquests, atheism principally against the Christian God, exclusionism against Christians in all walks of life, the lording of the arrogant and the economically powerful lording over the lesser nations, immorality in all forms and in every conceivable way, unimaginable greed that sees the rich and powerful exploiting the poor and vulnerable, preying acts of abomination against the weak and defenseless, selfishness of those who have against those who don’t and so on and so forth.

Satan’s sweeping influence has seen to it that whatever that holds potential good for mankind will invariably rear its ugly head. An otherwise good person can turn bad without much effort. Advances in medicine are used to aid abortion and euthanasia just as much as they are also used for helping the delusional to look forever young.

Increasingly sophisticated computing power that has given rise to wireless connectivity and the Internet at large has allowed social media to ruin lives but help IT giants to grow richer and more powerful. It has also enabled despotic movements including Islamic terrorists to wreak misery on the innocent across the whole world. Whatever great innovations that see the light of day will invariably produce something terribly bad as well.



Former FIFA head, the scandal-tainted Sepp Blatter (Image source: The Independent)

Globalising sports so that everyone in the world gets a chance to watch and enjoy has also paved the way for greed and corruption to take place. We see just as much of this in the staging of the Olympic Games as well as the FIFA World Cup as we do with other sports including cycling, swimming and athletics. Indeed, there is nothing left in the world where the good remains uncontested. In fact what good there is, bad is its dominating companion.

This struggle between good and bad is not something we can avoid because it confronts us wherever we are be it via the TV in the living room or the radio in the car or on the move via the smartphone. The noise all this makes in our lives often distracts us from the biggest and longest fight between good and evil. This fight has been going on even before the time of Adam and Eve.

It is the fight in which Satan is constantly devising ways to stop God from carrying out His plans. Till today, we keep seeing this fight taking on different forms and unfolding at unpredictable times especially after the devil’s failure at stopping Jesus at the Cross.

The scheme to thwart the birth of the Messiah

Movie impression of Herod the Great (Image source: fumcwharton.org)

Scripture teaches us that Jesus came into the world beating a path of redemption, salvation and peace for mankind. And in doing so, Man at last has a foolproof option of escaping the devil’s lair. 

For the first time, Man learned and understood Christ’s promise of salvation and through this, we knew to call Him our Messiah. The Old Testament prophesied Christ’s birth enough that the old world had elected to wait for such a long time just for it to take place.

But if we do not read Scripture carefully enough, we’d miss the point of Satan labouring very hard to try and force God on to His back foot. The idea was to prevent Him from sending His Son to Earth. The Messiah’s birth would be something Satan truly feared.

“But when people keep on sinning, it shows that they belong to the devil, who has been sinning since the beginning. But the Son of God came to destroy the works of the devil.” (1 Jn 3:8, NLT, m.e.)

And so began the first of many of the devil’s various schemes designed to destroy Him. With Christ’s birth prophesied, Satan began by getting into Herod the Great’s head, stirring provocation after provocation until he tasted fear. Understanding that the real King was coming to unseat him and rule the world was enough for Herod to undermine the wise men who had travelled from faraway lands just to see and bestow the baby Jesus with gifts (Mt 2:1-12).

Not surprisingly, Herod was joyless listening and understanding the significance of Jesus’ birth. Flying off the handle, he felt no other option than to prevent the new King from being born. If that was too late, Herod would still see to it that Jesus would not survive being murdered en mass. It might not be history’s first genocide but it was the very first one levelled at Jesus’ personal life just as Herod did everything he could to stop anyone from usurping his throne.

But even so, God proved He was well ahead of Satan’s plot. He despatched an angel to warn Joseph:

“¹³ After the wise men were gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. ‘Get up! Flee to Egypt with the child and his mother,’ the angel said. ‘Stay there until I tell you to return, because Herod is going to search for the child to kill him.’ ¹⁴ That night Joseph left for Egypt with the child and Mary, his mother, ¹⁵ and they stayed there until Herod’s death. This fulfilled what the Lord had spoken through the prophet: ‘I called my Son out of Egypt.’” (Mt 2:13-15, NLT, m.e.)

Out of obedience, Joseph heeded the warning and promptly left for Egypt. There he and Mary stayed until Herod’s demise. As baby Jesus was born, His birth would forever by marked by a royal decreed mass murder that was meant to kill Him before He had any chance to wreck the devil’s own plans. But try as he might have, God defeated him thus scuttling one of his many nefarious plots.

Even though he couldn’t stop Jesus from being born, he made sure that throughout His life on Earth, he would do everything in his power to get ahead and stop Him. For instance, sending Him to death on the Cross was supposedly a crowning glory to Satan. 

He certainly thought this would be the pinnacle of his ‘achievement’ but incredibly, it turned out to be just the opposite. It was not for trying. Satan just wasn’t aware that through the Cross, Jesus could show in all His grandeur His death nailed in between two common thieves before He unveiled His resurrection.

To that end, Satan failed miserably to prevent the one thing that he so desperately wanted to stop from happening. That Jesus overcame sin and death on the Cross marked an event far too unbelievable for the devil. By that action alone, the Son of God didn’t just silence him but He also rebuked him at the same time. We’ll study this a lot more closely towards the end of the article.

For now, let’s take a short trip through history just before Jesus’ birth and see Satan’s vain attempts at stopping God come what may.

The devil’s hand at marring Creation

Lucifer and the fallen angels (Image source: youtube)

There was a period before God created the world that Satan had enormous power and influence over many of His angels. Back then, he was more commonly known by the name Lucifer. Lucifer was a magnificent creature in his own right. He was not only glorious looking but also mighty. Unfortunately, he also had his own plans that ran afoul of God.

When he gained knowledge of God’s plan for Creation, Lucifer decided that he had enough of being His mere underling and so he wanted out. It was then that He wanted everything. He wanted to be like God. It was going to be all about him. Isaiah recorded this Satan’s self-indulgence very vividly here:

“For you said to yourself, ‘I will ascend to heaven and set my throne above God’s stars. I will preside on the mountain of the gods far away in the north. ¹⁴ I will climb to the highest heavens and be like the Most High.’” (Isa 14:13-14, NLT)

Depending on what your source is, Lucifer summoned a large number of angels to rebel against God, resulting in their fall from grace. Invariably, they were all kicked out of heaven. The Apocalyptic Book of Jubilees put that figure as nine-tenth of all the angels available, meaning that only ten percent remained loyal to God. But then somehow, this figure was omitted and hence we have the Book of Revelation saying only this:

“⁷ Then there was war in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon and his angels. ⁸ And the dragon lost the battle, and he and his angels were forced out of heaven. ⁹ This great dragon – the ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, the one deceiving the whole world – was thrown down to the earth with all his angels.” (Rev 12:7-9, NLT, m.e.)

Though some claim it to be one-third – the reverse of what the Apocalyptic Book says – as you can see, nowhere is it mentioned the actual proportion of angels that Satan took with him. However, we might have a bit more clue here:

“⁴ His tail swept away one-third of the stars in the sky, and he threw them to the earth.” (Rev 12:4, NLT, m.e.)

Some scholars believe that the “stars in the sky” attest to the angels in heaven. Indeed, in Revelations, there is, perhaps, a passage that substantiates this:

“²⁰ This is the meaning of the mystery of the seven stars you saw in my right hand and the seven gold lampstands: The seven stars are the angels of the seven churches, and the seven lampstands are the seven churches.” (Rev 1:20, NLT, m.e.)

But we do know for certain that there were angels who sinned and these were the ones who were thrown out of heaven together with Satan (2 Pt 2:4, Jd 1:6). The one thing that the Bible did not describe is how the angels rebelled against God at Satan’s behest (Rev 12:7-9). I can imagine for a second that together they could have laid waste to Earth. In doing so, they reduced it to ruins, leaving it completely in a terrible state. That may be why the earth was not in shipshape condition:

“² The earth was formless and empty, and darkness covered the deep waters.” (Gen 1:2a, NLT, m.e.)

The fundamental basis for God’s Creationism is that Earth was not liveable until He began to transform it (Gen 1-2). It was only after He filled it with all the bare necessities that He was then ready to create Man in His image. It was ultimately this very creation of the human being that would permanently destroy Satan’s relationship with God.

Through Man, God now has a creation whom He was pleased with. And by giving stewardship to Adam, all His other creations on Earth were under his dominion. It wouldn’t be surprising if all of this angered Satan enough to direct all his vicious attacks at. Compared to going head-on against God, attacking Man would have been far simpler. While the devil is not match for God’s wisdom, it would be more straightforward to handle Man because his innocence made him particularly vulnerable.

It is for that reason that Adam and Eve were simply not prepared for the devil’s conniving ways. And so in the Garden of Eden, sin in Man was born and since then, it has become Satan’s signature triumph. He did the unthinkable by separating Man from God and as a result, life from thereon forever changed. 

What was supposedly a perfect life under perfect conditions was completely compromised by sin. The curse of sin roared its way into and became the centre of the life of Man till today. And because of sin, we lost our battle against death.



Some people just think it's fun turning up as Satan let alone doing a movie on him (Image source: Daily Beast)

But Satan does not have the upper hand. Inherent in his own nature is his profound weakness. His preoccupation with himself over everyone else makes him very susceptible for the fall:

“¹² ‘How you are fallen from heaven, O shining star, son of the morning! You have been thrown down to the earth, you who destroyed the nations of the world. ¹³ For you said to yourself, ‘I will ascend to heaven and set my throne above God’s stars. I will preside on the mountain of the gods far away in the north. ¹⁴ I will climb to the highest heavens and be like the Most High.’” (Isa 14:12-14, NLT, m.e.)

In the Book of Isaiah is the infamous passage that reveals Satan’s conceitedness. In just three verses, his self-importance is impossible to ignore. Reminders of his narcissism can be found four times – three ‘I will’s’ and one ‘my’ – and alone, they flesh out an egotism that God found detestable. When the Lord begins the passage, saying, “How you are fallen from heaven,” it is a significant indictment of Satan’s character.

Knowing all that makes it easier to understand why the Lord declared to the devil himself:

“And I will cause hostility between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring. He will strike your head, and you will strike his heel.” (Gen 3:15, NLT)

If we’re looking for a verse that resembles a declaration of war, this one is as close as we can get. The significant part in God’s declaration is what He said here: “He will strike your head and you will strike his heel.” Three distinctions are important here.

Firstly, the head belongs to the serpent – the same one as expressed in Revelation 12:9 – which is symbolic of Satan himself. In the second point, ‘her offspring’ in some other Bible translations is worded as “the seed of the woman,” which would be a direct reference to the Messiah Himself. Unmistakably then, being “the seed of the woman,” Jesus would come to Earth born not of a human father but of the Father Himself and be seeded in the womb of a human but virgin mother.

In Matthew 1 (as well as Luke 3:23-37), the genealogy of Jesus is outlined, going all the way back to Adam. We know that Eve was created from Adam’s rib and so was effectively born from him. Therefore – and here’s the third point – the ‘he’ in God’s declaration refers to Jesus. In other words, the Father says that, Jesus will crush Satan’s head and Satan himself will strike His heels.

Satan will shore up all his evil and bear it all on mankind. His vindictive desire is to bury Man alive as a way of getting back at God. But he faces an impossible problem because God would crush him first. And then on the Day of Judgement, he will finally be flung into the fiery lake.

Although God’s declaration was explicit enough, Satan may or may not be aware of the virgin birth. But whether he did or not is immaterial because he couldn’t have known who Mary and Joseph were at that time. They were, after all, very ordinary people plucked from anonymity. 

It was only when the wise men turned up in Jerusalem looking to pursue the birth of the Messiah that Satan’s ears were prickled. It was then that he acted quickly to stir Herod the Great into action. Rubbing his hands in glee, the devil would have thought victory was finally at hand.

By then, judging from what the wise men said, destroying the “seed of the woman” before He could be born was not possible anymore. So the second best thing to do was to have every single male offspring up to 2 years of age killed. 

With any luck, little Jesus would be among those killed. Had he been able to do that, history would have been very different. In fact, all of humanity could have gone up in smoke shortly thereafter because there would have been no one to save us from our sins.

But God acted well before Herod could do anything and so, before his soldiers arrived in Bethlehem, Joseph and his young family had already bolted in haste for Egypt. But before we look at this in great detail, let’s journey back to the immediate post-Adamaic days.

From creation, Satan worked on Cain

Cain murders Abel (Image source: The Disciple Maker)

Having done all he could to get Adam and Eve evicted from the Garden of Eden, Satan’s work has only just begun. But in tasting ‘victory’ this early, he also knew he had his work cut out for him. There was much to do that laid ahead and so, he would have been quite motivated to wreak even more damage to Man.

Even though Earth’s first married couple were forced out of their natural home, that didn’t stop them from starting their family and with that, the vital lineage that would lead to God’s next plan further down the road. As of now, Adam’s two sons were already born. They were Cain and Abel.

“Now Adam had sexual relations with his wife, Eve, and she became pregnant. When she gave birth to Cain, she said, ‘With the Lord’s help, I have produced a man!’” (Gen 4:1, NLT, m.e.)

It’s interesting to note that Eve said, “With the Lord’s help, I have produced a man!” only because at that point in time, she really thought that Cain, being their first born, was the so-called “promised seed.” In deference, Satan knew that wasn’t the case and with that, he resorted to stirring Cain to a fit of jealousy towards Abel, a fit that was enough for him to hatch a plan to murder his own brother.

Satan knew that Eve was wrong in thinking that Cain was the “promised seed.” He on the other hand believed that honour fell to Abel, his younger brother. Having done enough provocation, Cain did finally murdered his own younger brother. He really felt good about the murder. Abel was dead and there was no way out of this. The lineage was destroyed and he could now go home, sit back and relax.

All of this was well documented in the apostle John’s letter where he wrote:

“We must not be like Cain, who belonged to the evil one and killed his brother. And why did he kill him? Because Cain had been doing what was evil, and his brother had been doing what was righteous.” (1 Jn 3:12, NLT, m.e.)

While it is likely true that it was Abel who held the initial key to the genealogy that led to Jesus, God wasn’t stuck for ideas. With the murder of Abel, the Lord gave Eve another child who, they called Seth. And indeed, it was through the line of Seth that the Messiah would invariably come from.

With his brother’s blood on his hands, God banished him to the land of Nod. It’s tempting to think that the Lord should have destroyed Cain for being a murderer but He didn’t. God displayed as much mercy here as He did all that while with Satan himself. However, of course, Cain would spawn a genealogy of his own that would play into the devil’s hands.

Everything around Noah faced destruction

The site purported by the late Ron Wyatt to be where the Ark landed (Image source: Wyatt Museum)

A little more than 1,100 years separated Cain and Noah’s times but that has not stopped Satan from attempting to corrupt the human race. Winding the Genesis story forward to the days of Noah and we now witness unprecedented debauchery in society. It got so bad that God had regrets creating Man:

“⁵ The Lord observed the extent of human wickedness on the earth, and He saw that everything they thought or imagined was consistently and totally evil. ⁶ So the Lord was sorry He had ever made them and put them on the earth. It broke His heart.” (Gen 6:5-6, NLT, m.e.)

But one man stood blameless for he was a righteous man who “walked in close fellowship with God” (v.9). Unlike what God saw in the others, Noah and his family were a rare exception. Lost in a landscape filled with evil, God’s disappointment with Man was enough to make Him decide to wipe them all off the face of the Earth. Other than Noah and his family, every single Man standing would be destroyed.

Satan’s hand in the debauchery of Man was very evident. Spiritually weak men caved in to his evil and succumbed to his abomination. In turn, society broke down to an irreparable state with unyoked marriages, pagan worship, violence and “the extent of human wickedness” that must have been beyond what God had expected. It has to be very bad because “it broke His heart.”

But here’s the incredible twist. God’s instructions to Noah to build an Ark so that he and his family could escape the flood that was to come possibly sounded too implausible to Satan. Many questions could be asked at this point even though Scripture is silent about any answers. 

Was the land very parched then that rain was rare? Was Noah located at an area near enough to any sea? If not, did building the Ark in the middle of nowhere appear odd to the people around him? Or was shipbuilding a common industry in that part of the land? How long did it take for Noah and his family to complete building the Ark?

These and other questions help raise the issue of whether or not Satan was even aware of what the Ark was about. Could he be so engrossed with all the violence, corruption and wickedness that he ignored the Ark being constructed? However, one thing was certain – God’s instructions to Noah were clear. After everything was ready to set sail, He said that seven days were all it took thereafter for Him to unleash enough rain for forty days and forty nights to truly flood the Earth (Gen 7:4).

It is probable that Satan did not expect God to wipe every evil person off the face of the Earth… not least, with a flood. Perhaps then, he didn’t think much of Noah building the Ark. It might have all sounded too ridiculous to him. God’s sovereignty over all of Creation meant that it was entirely His right to decide what to do with all that wickedness He saw. It was hence His divine right to destroy as much as it was His decision to feel “sorry He had ever made them and put them on the Earth.”

But by wiping all the wickedness away, God could start with a clean slate and work His covenant around the surviving Noah and his family. Once again, Satan’s best effort was thwarted successfully.

From Babel to Abraham and beyond

Nimrod (Image source: Youtube)

Another 340 years after Noah and the others left the Ark that we arrive at the Genesis story of the Tower of Babel (Gen 11:1-9). The central Babel character of note was Nimrod but according to Scottish minister and writer, Alexander Hislop (1807-1865), his mother Semiramis also played a key role in undermining God.

Described in the Bible as “the first on earth to be a mighty man” (Gen 10:8), Nimrod was a formidable hunter-warrior who conquered much of the land of Shinar around him including Babel before advancing to Assyria and annexing the city of Nineveh. 

Although there are several theories as to her actual identity, Hislop not only claimed that Semiramis was Nimrod’s wife but that she was also instrumental in helping the both of them to be coronated as god and goddess. Together, they denied God His divinity, replacing Him with an astrologically-based polytheistic system.

Semiramis, who was once an innkeeper (a ‘brothel mistress’ back then), was the original Queen of Heaven mentioned by the prophet Jeremiah:

“¹⁵ Then all the women present and all the men who knew that their wives had burned incense to idols—a great crowd of all the Judeans living in northern Egypt and southern Egypt – answered Jeremiah, ¹⁶ “We will not listen to your messages from the Lord! ¹⁷ We will do whatever we want. We will burn incense and pour out liquid offerings to the Queen of Heaven just as much as we like – just as we, and our ancestors, and our kings and officials have always done in the towns of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem. For in those days we had plenty to eat, and we were well off and had no troubles! ¹⁸ But ever since we quit burning incense to the Queen of Heaven and stopped worshipping her with liquid offerings, we have been in great trouble and have been dying from war and famine.” (Jer 44:15-18, NLT, m.e.)

Semiramis’ assumed divinity was also known by other names including Astarte and Ashtoreth. Online resources tell us that Astarte is the Hellenised version of the goddess of Ashtoreth, which in itself is an Eastern Semitic form of Ishtar. It was worshipped from the Bronze Age through classical iniquity. Astarte was symbolic for the divine power over fertility and sexuality but in some other cases, she was supposedly a battlefield goddess.

Semiramis’ widespread influence links her quite credibly to the latter-day female deity concepts we see today in the forms of Taoism’s Goddess of Mercy (Kuanyin), animism’s famous primordial deity of Mother Nature called Gaia as well as Roman Catholic’s Mediatrix, the intercessory mediator of the Virgin Mary and many others across various different religions. All of these are, of course, attempts to discredit God and usurp His divinity.



Source: Iamthewordthecomforter.blogspot.com

But it gets worse. Semiramis bore Nimrod a son who eventually joined her to create the world’s first mother-and-son cult. This pair went on to inspire the ancient mythical Egyptian goddess Isis and her husband-reincarnate, Osiris, who also, somehow, became her son. In their union, they produced Horus, the protagonist of the bewildering Osiris myth. Yet that’s not all. Through Semiramis, Satan cultivated others beyond Isis and Osiris, including the Greco mythology of Venus and Adonis as well as Hindu’s famous Ushas and Vishnu.

In Scripture, Semiramis is not mentioned – at least not by name – but Nimrod is. His infamy will always be tied to the Tower of Babel and the defiance against God that it stood for. Nimrod corrupted the human race by introducing a united politico-religious system that he’d hoped would challenge Him:

“⁴ Then they said, ‘Come, let’s build a great city for ourselves with a tower that reaches into the sky. This will make us famous and keep us from being scattered all over the world.’” (Gen 11:4, NLT, m.e.)

The idea was Nimrod wanted to deify himself by uniting the people around him to defy God:

“⁵ But the Lord came down to look at the city and the tower the people were building. ⁶ ‘Look!’ he said. ‘The people are united, and they all speak the same language. After this, nothing they set out to do will be impossible for them!’” (Gen 11:5-6, NLT)

Almost 4,300 years later, the spirit of Nimrod persists in the form of the European Union (E.U.). Like Nimrod, the E.U. had built a system in which, “nothing they set out to do will be impossible for them.” Today, the E.U. has stripped individual European member states of much of their sovereign rights and replaced them with collectivism or in another word, socialism.  



EU politicians are apparently aware of their Parliament building being modelled after Brueghel's Tower of Babel and what that means (Image source: Bible Light)

While different languages continue to have local relevance, the monetary, judicial, political, economic, financial, education and many other governing ministries are now all unified under a single umbrella. That is why leading states within the E.U. mechanism have reacted with such hostility towards the U.K.’s Brexit. They see the British move to divorce themselves from the Union as a threat to their conglomerating agenda. But that is exactly what Nimrod wanted to achieve.

In view of what he was attempting to achieve with the Tower, God sent a confusion of tongues to force the people to scatter abroad thus ruining Nimrod’s grand plans of deified domination and outwitting Satan once more:

“‘⁷ Come, let’s go down and confuse the people with different languages. Then they won’t be able to understand each other.’ ⁸ In that way, the Lord scattered them all over the world, and they stopped building the city. ⁹ That is why the city was called Babel, because that is where the Lord confused the people with different languages. In this way, He scattered them all over the world.” (Gen 11:7-9, NLT, m.e.)

A little less than 400 years later came a man from whose lineage Jesus would emerge. His name was Abraham:

“God gave the promises to Abraham and his child. And notice that the Scripture doesn’t say ‘to his children,’ as if it meant many descendants. Rather, it says ‘to his child’ – and that, of course, means Christ.” (Gal 3:16, NLT)

In other words, Abraham was extremely important to God’s covenant plan. Paul in his letter to the Galatians says just as much when he alluded to Scripture saying, “to his child” meaning not anyone else but Christ. However, for Abraham to forge the lineage leading to Jesus, he needed to have offspring to carry on his line. Seeing that his wife Sarah was barren, that would be a tad difficult. Conception, in other words, was, pun unintended, inconceivable.

Yet God had promised him that from him and his descendants would a nation come:

“¹⁴ After Lot had gone, the Lord said to Abram, “Look as far as you can see in every direction – north and south, east and west. ¹⁵ I am giving all this land, as far as you can see, to you and your descendants as a permanent possession. ¹⁶ And I will give you so many descendants that, like the dust of the earth, they cannot be counted! ¹⁷ Go and walk through the land in every direction, for I am giving it to you.” (Gen 13:14-17, NLT, m.e.)

Sarai’s inability to conceive a child was one thing; how she’d reacted to God’s promise and what she’d do as a result were different matters altogether. Of course, she could’ve just obeyed the Lord and allow Him free rein to fulfil His plan. After all, if He’d said she would bear a son – whom God said would be called Isaac (Gen 17:19) – then surely, she would bear a son! But that did not happen.



James Tissot's 'Sarai Sends Hagar Away' (Image source: Wikiart)

Instead Sarai took matters in her own hands and did what was right in her eyes:

“² So Sarai said to Abram, ‘The Lord has prevented me from having children. Go and sleep with my servant. Perhaps I can have children through her.’” (Gen 16:2, NLT, m.e.)

God did not say He would provide an offspring to Abram and Sarai through someone else, much less their pagan Egyptian servant. To do things counter to God’s instructions would be nothing less than disobedience. In that sense, Sarai did something that could have put a risk to the covenantal line.

It would also be an act that would have delighted Satan to no end. Here was a perfect opportunity for God’s plan to be thwarted. We can imagine how Sarai was so into her own thoughts that perhaps Satan might have set her up for the fall:

“But when Hagar knew she was pregnant, she began to treat her mistress, Sarai, with contempt. ⁵ Then Sarai said to Abram, ‘This is all your fault! I put my servant into your arms, but now that she’s pregnant she treats me with contempt. The Lord will show who’s wrong – you or me!’ ⁶ Abram replied, ‘Look, she is your servant, so deal with her as you see fit.’ Then Sarai treated Hagar so harshly that she finally ran away.” (Gen 16:4-6, NLT)

We can read many things in the above passage but what we cannot ignore is Sarai’s emotions. For a woman who can’t give her husband a child but becomes a witness to someone else who can, must be tough. In this story, Hagar took advantage to gloat as well and in the end, each woman treated the other contemptuously and vice-versa. It’s not hard to picture Satan rubbing his hands in glee and laughing all the way in the background as he witnessed the scene.

Sarah was so emotionally vulnerable that the matter of who would provide her and Abram with a son became contentious. But this was not just any son. Unlike Ishmael, Isaac was to be the covenantal son. God told Abram that through him, a nation would come and so would descendants as many as the stars in the sky (Gen 15:5). In His covenant with the now-renamed Abraham, God said that out of his fatherhood will come many nations (Gen 17:5) and some of his descendants will even become kings (v.6).

Some scholars familiar with ancient traditions back then claim that surrogacy was the custom of the day but in the context of what took place between Sarai, Abram and Hagar was far more than that because it added an unnecessary layer of complication that threatened to derail God’s plan. Had Abram and Sarai fallen for it and settled for Ishmael, that would threaten the covenantal genealogy that the Lord had in mind. 

But of course, God couldn’t possibly be so easily rebuffed. There was nothing Satan had on Him that would turn the tables decisively. He might complicate things but he couldn’t ever mount a successful challenge to God. That covenant son was finally born to two aged parents, Abraham and Sarah (Gen 21:1-7). Isaac then grew up to marry Rebekah (Gen 25:20) and like his mother Sarai, now his wife was also barren:

“Isaac pleaded with the Lord on behalf of his wife, because she was unable to have children. The Lord answered Isaac’s prayer, and Rebekah became pregnant with twins.” (Gen 25:21, NLT, m.e.)

NOTE: Some scholars believe that Satan was behind Sarai’s barrenness. Even if that was the case, he still failed because God had the power to open her womb. At any rate, Sarai admitted it herself that, “the Lord has prevented me from having children” (Gen 16:2). In other words, the likelihood is that Sarai’s barrenness had nothing to do with Satan.

Just like in Sarai’s case, Rebekah’s womb was also closed but Isaac prayed, pleading the Lord to overcome her barrenness. It worked. God answered and the twins, Jacob and Esau were born (Gen 25:20, 25:26). And with that, God’s covenant was kept alive and unhindered. Again, whether or not Satan had anything to do with it, God could not be denied.



Jacob steals Esau's birthright (Image source: studyjesus.com)

Those familiar with this biblical story would remember well that Jacob stole Esau’s birthright (Gen 27:1-30) after which, he ran as far as he could away from his twin brother (Gen 27:41-28:9). Knowing he would be really mad with him, Jacob didn’t return for many years and in that time, he was deceived by his father-in-law into marrying Leah (Gen 29:15-25) when who he wanted was her sister, Rachel. Eventually he did get to marry the love of his life (vv.26-30).

Despite all that merriment, a pall laid overcast on Jacob’s life because of his estrangement from his twin brother, Esau. He knew he had to resolve it but he was also aware that it wouldn’t be easy. In fact, Esau might still be so angry with his misdeed that he might still want to kill him.

Scripture leads us to believe that Jacob and Esau were fraternal twins, meaning they were not identical. In particular, Esau was “very red at birth” and was “covered with thick hair like a fur coat” (Gen 25:25), implying that Jacob was completely the opposite. Even though Esau was the biological firstborn, God knew he would in his adult life, form the nation of Edom. As we know from Scripture, the Edomites turned out to be pagan worshippers and staunch enemies of Israel.

NOTE: Also known as Idumeans, the Edomites underwent cultural assimilation to eventually mould themselves into the ‘Palestinians’ of today. Psalm 83’s portrayal of the “tents of Edom” appear today as refugee camps as propagated by the notorious Palestine Authority. In their heydays, the Edomites were not only constantly at odds against the Israelites but they occupied some of Israel’s most fertile land as well. Under King Saul’s rule, the Edomites did attack Israel but all that came to a grinding halt when his successor, King David succeeded in stopping them at their tracks and annexing their land. 

With the fall of the First Temple, it was, again, the Edomites who attacked Judah and laid waste the Temple. Having been laid under siege, the Edomites eventually converted to Judaism (often against their will) by Hasmonean leader and Jewish high priest, John Hyrcanus (164-104BC) and became an integral part of the Jewry. 

One particularly famous Edomite was Herod the Great who not only built the Second Temple but was also responsible for orchestrating the genocide in Bethlehem in order to have baby Jesus killed (Mt 2:16-18). Following the death of Herod, the Edomites – who by then became known as the Idumeans – gradually faded into oblivion as prophesied by Ezekiel (Ezek 35:15). Incredibly as well, as was foretold to Rebekah that the older child (Esau) would end up serving the younger (Jacob), Israel proved stronger than Edom despite the efforts of the latter to constantly lay siege over the Jews.

Satan’s pharaonic insurrection

The 400-year slavery period was prophesied to Abram (Image source: Christianity Malaysia)

In the time of Moses, Scripture tells us that the Israelites were enslaved in Egypt for hundreds of years. But there seems to be some controversy as to how many years they were there for. The Book of Exodus appears to make it clear:

“⁴⁰ The people of Israel had lived in Egypt for 430 years. ⁴¹ In fact, it was on the last day of the 430th year that all the Lord’s forces left the land.” (Ex 12:40-41, NLT, m.e.)

This passage certainly puts it at 430 years. Verse 41 amplifies the fact that after the last day of the 430th year, “all the Lord’s forces” – meaning His chosen people – departed from Egypt.

On the other hand, rather than Exodus 12:40, rabbinical tradition places greater importance on the following passage:

“¹³ Then the Lord said to Abram, ‘You can be sure that your descendants will be strangers in a foreign land, where they will be oppressed as slaves for 400 years.’” (Gen 15:13, NLT, m.e.)

The context for this passage is when Abram fell into a deep sleep and God spoke to him in his dream. The ‘400 years’ here speaks clearly of the length of time in which the Jews would suffer in slavery. Compared to the ‘430 years’ from Exodus 12:40, this one is arguably more specific.

So assuming that by way of rabbinical tradition, 400 years is the benchmark for bondage in Egypt, it marks the total period counting from the birth of Isaac. When Esau and Jacob were born, Isaac was 60 years of age (Gen 25:26). 

When Jacob was aged 130, he stood before Pharaoh, having been introduced to him by his son Joseph (Gen 47:9). So, when Jacob made the trip to Egypt at that age, 190 (60 + 130) of the 400 years had already passed, leaving 210 years, which is the number of years that the rabbis claim that the Israelites were suffering as slaves in Egypt.

We can argue whether it was 430 or 210 years for the next many years but the key point remains that the entire nation of Israel was ensconced in Egypt in terrible bondage. That fact remains incontestable. Just like bonded migrant Bangladeshi blue-collar workers are today in Dubai working as hard labourers, the Israelites in Egypt were pretty much the same.

It wasn’t the life that the children of Israel had hoped for but God had long forewarned this when He told Abraham in his dream (Gen 15:13). Throughout four centuries of struggle and hardship, the Lord exhibited great patience with Satan. He proved that He was slow to boil and abounding in mercy:

“⁸ The Lord is compassionate and merciful, slow to get angry and filled with unfailing love. ⁹ He will not constantly accuse us, nor remain angry forever. ¹⁰ He does not punish us for all our sins; He does not deal harshly with us, as we deserve. ¹¹ For His unfailing love toward those who fear Him is as great as the height of the heavens above the earth.” (Ps 108:8-11, NLT, m.e.)

God did this for two reasons. Firstly, He wanted His people to be patient as He used Moses to unleash the ten plagues one after another after which they would leave their slavery behind filled with “great possessions” that the Egyptians would give them (Ex 12:35-36). 

Secondly, He needed to deal with the iniquities of the sinful and paganistic Amorites while they were still occupying the Promised Land. God had said that one day soon, He would destroy them and make way for the Israelites to live in (Num 21:31-32, Josh 10:10, 11:8).

Certainly the 400-year period was not without incidents. In each of them, Satan challenged God, seeking to destroy Him or at the very least, tamper with His credibility and reputation. A case in point was Joseph, son of Jacob.

Joseph’s preservation of God’s people in Egypt in a time of great famine was a miracle that Satan didn’t see coming. Although his eleven jealous brothers did all they could to get rid of him and despite the initial tough time he endured in Egypt, Joseph defied the odds and rose to become Pharaoh’s right-hand man and he wasn’t even Egyptian! (Gen 37-50) And of course, Joseph, much beloved by Jacob and Rachel, held the key to the genealogy of Christ.

300 years on, Scripture tells us how Moses’ life was spared although it appeared he would, among all other male Hebrew children, be killed. In Pharaoh’s concern of the threat posed by the Hebrew’s rapid birth rate, he organised a deadly purge to quell their numbers. 

But Moses escaped because his mother placed him in a waterproofed papyrus vessel and floated him down the Nile where he was noticed by Pharaoh’s own daughter (Ex 2:3-6). In his later years, Moses grew up assuming the stature of an Egyptian prince poised for great things (Acts 7:22) although God ensured that he would still know his Hebrew faith (Ex 2:7-9). But things turned swiftly and ugly.

While visiting his own people one day, Moses witnessed an Egyptian senselessly battering a fellow Hebrew. Losing his composure, he murdered and then buried him in the sand (vv.11-12) but not before his act was secretly witnessed by another Hebrew. By then it was too late and Pharaoh sent his soldiers to hunt him down and kill him. With no other choice in hand, Moses fled Egypt and lived in the land of Midian (vv.13-15) where he settled down as a herder, married to Zipporah, daughter of Jethro (v.21). 

Yet God had plans for him that no one, not least Satan, expected. Forty years thereafter, God pressed him into service in their encounter at the burning bush (Ex 3:2-3) in order to save His people from “the burden of slavery” where they were “crying for help” (v.7). But here was a man whose past he’d rather forget. He lacked the self-confidence to do anything beyond his station in life as a herder (Ex 3:11, 4:10).

Together with his brother Aaron, Moses returned to Egypt to free his fellow enslaved Hebrews. And through all the trials he endured against Pharaoh, God unleashed plague after plague (Ex 7:9-10:23) but stubbornly, he stood his ground even though his people and land suffered devastatingly. But it was the tenth and final plague that forced Pharaoh’s hand because among all the Egyptian firstborns who were killed was Pharaoh’s own (Ex 11:4-8, 12:29-30). And with that, 430 years of slavery ended.

With as many as 600,000 Hebrews, Moses and Aaron led them out of Egypt and bondage but not before, as God prophesied, the Egyptians gave His people “whatever they asked for” including clothing, silver and gold (Ex 12:35-36, Gen 15:14). Unfortunately, not long after they left Egypt behind, Pharaoh reneged on his promise and sought to destroy them (Ex 14:3-9), which then takes us to the climactic scene at the shores of the Red Sea.



As God commands, Moses parts the Red Sea (Image source: jbrown67.deviantart.com)

Painted to a corner with nowhere to escape, God’s people felt the doom of death (v.9b). It was going to be either killed by the Egyptians or drowned in sea. With Pharaoh’s army just around the corner, there was no middle ground. For Satan, this was a perfect moment even he couldn’t have orchestrated. Did God just lead His people to a dead end? Was that why the people were now wailing and showing their fists to God? No one could imagine there was any way out of this (vv.10-12).

It’s hard to imagine that after thousands of years, Satan still could underestimate an omnipotent God but again, this was what happened. Even with the people’s backs against the wall, there was still an incredible miracle to witness:

“¹⁶ Pick up your staff and raise your hand over the sea. Divide the water so the Israelites can walk through the middle of the sea on dry ground. ¹⁷ And I will harden the hearts of the Egyptians, and they will charge in after the Israelites. My great glory will be displayed through Pharaoh and his troops, his chariots, and his charioteers. ¹⁸ When My glory is displayed through them, all Egypt will see My glory and know that I am the Lord!’” (Ex 14:16-18, NLT)

Through a strong easterly wind that night, Moses parted the sea as instructed. The waters were prised apart with an open corridor in between two high-standing opposing walls. The winds blew through the night, transforming a typical seabed into dry ground so that the people could walk across safely (vv.21-22).

Nobody, not even Satan, could look at such a sight and not be stunned because no one expected something of this scale to take place. But if this was incredible, what followed immediately was unbelievable:

“²⁶ When all the Israelites had reached the other side, the Lord said to Moses, ‘Raise your hand over the sea again. Then the waters will rush back and cover the Egyptians and their chariots and charioteers.’ ²⁷ So as the sun began to rise, Moses raised his hand over the sea, and the water rushed back into its usual place. The Egyptians tried to escape, but the Lord swept them into the sea. ²⁸ Then the waters returned and covered all the chariots and charioteers—the entire army of Pharaoh. Of all the Egyptians who had chased the Israelites into the sea, not a single one survived.” (Ex 14;26-28, NLT, m.e.)

You don’t even have to be a Christian to know something of this story. Even Hollywood is quite familiar with it. Still, after 3,300 years, it remains an amazing story. Not only did all of God’s 600,000 Chosen People escape unscathed but since, “not a single one survived,” that means every single Egyptian in Pharaoh’s army was wiped out. That God could be this devastating couldn’t have escaped Satan who would have looked on with disbelief. You don’t mess with a God who’s told us that, “vengeance is Mine” (Rom 12:19), do you!

Looking back, Satan probably didn’t think God would save His people especially after they complained bitterly and expressed regret at heeding God’s command to leave Egypt (Ex 14:11-12). He expected Him to unleash His fury at them. He probably assumed He would leave them to Pharaoh’s army since that was their complaint. But then Satan has no understanding of God’s love of His people. Love itself is an alien concept to him.

However, even in crushing defeat, Satan was certainly not done yet. He doesn’t seem to learn from what he has seen of God’s power. So the devastation of Pharaoh’s army did nothing to quell his determination to continue waging war against Him. After all, his overriding mission is to stop whatever plan He has in mind of carrying out (though he had no idea what that is).

The massacre in the house of Judah

Jehu annihilated Ahab's descendants and family members (Image source: blog.edsuom.com)

Throughout Israel’s history, there was one time in which Satan came within a hair’s breadth of annihilating everyone in a royal household. Save for an escapee – a little toddler by the name of Joash – he would’ve tasted sweet victory against God in the massacre of “the rest of Judah’s royal family.”

This story – some 436 years after Moses parted the Red Sea – is told to us in the Second Book of Chronicles where the boy and his nurse were bundled out and put into hiding in the temple for six years (2 Chr 22:10-12). It begins with the reign of King Jehu of Israel whom the prophet Elisha had anointed. God had a mission for the new king and that was to wipe out Baal worship throughout the land. He was to do this by eliminating all of King Ahab’s descendants:

“Then the young prophet poured oil over Jehu’s head and said, ‘This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: I anoint you king over the Lord’s people, Israel. ⁷ You are to destroy the family of Ahab, your master. In this way, I will avenge the murder of My prophets and all the Lord’s servants who were killed by Jezebel. ⁸ The entire family of Ahab must be wiped out. I will destroy every one of his male descendants, slave and free alike, anywhere in Israel. ⁹ I will destroy the family of Ahab as I destroyed the families of Jeroboam son of Nebat and of Baasha son of Ahijah. ¹⁰ Dogs will eat Ahab’s wife Jezebel at the plot of land in Jezreel, and no one will bury her.’” (2 Kgs 9:6b-10, NLT)

As to why God felt this way about Ahab and his family, here’s the reason why:

“²⁵ (No one else so completely sold himself to what was evil in the Lord’s sight as Ahab did under the influence of his wife Jezebel. ²⁶ His worst outrage was worshipping idols just as the Amorites had done – the people whom the Lord had driven out from the land ahead of the Israelites.)” (1 Kgs 21:25-26, NLT)

After hearing what the Lord had decided to do to him, Ahab repented. He mourned and mourned and in his humility, God actually spared his life but not during his son’s reign. That was when God had now reserved His vengeance for. Armed with such a task, Jehu set about to deal with Ahab’s son, Joram, who by then was the king of Israel. The idea was that by ridding Israel of Joram, Jehu himself would be king. In Judah, Ahaziah was the king and he was as wicked as Joram (2 Kgs 8:25).

Not surprisingly, Ahaziah and Joram did much the same as the latter’s parents used to do during their reign:

“²⁷ Ahaziah followed the evil example of King Ahab’s family. He did what was evil in the Lord’s sight, just as Ahab’s family had done, for he was related by marriage to the family of Ahab.” (2 Kgs 8:27, NLT)

By divine consent and acting out God’s command, Jehu killed both Ahaziah and Joram (2 Kgs 9:21-27). Next, he executed Jezebel, Ahab’s wife (vv.32-33). After that, it was Ahab’s descendants (2 Kgs 10:7-8). Lastly he killed all of Baal’s prophets and followers before he set forth to destroy whatever that remained of the pagan worship (vv.20-28).

Despite achieving so much for God, Jehu himself was compromised by Satan. He ended up not walking in the ways of God (vv.29, 31) but due to the enormity of the tasks he had accomplished for Him, he and four of his subsequent generations were spared and they all went on to assume the throne of Israel although the size of the nation shrank (vv.32-33).

Across in Judah, Ahaziah’s murder did not go unanswered. His mother, Athaliah, stormed Judah and seized control. Lost in her violent rage, she had everyone in the royal household killed and with no one to resist her, she took the throne of Judah for herself. As it turned out, she missed out on the little toddler, Joash.

Once again, God outfoxed Satan. In an unexpected twist to the story, God used Jehosheba, who was Athaliah’s sister, to rescue Joash and his nurse. By hiding in the Temple of the Lord, both were safely out of sight even though all the other children were gruesomely murdered.

Athaliah ruled Judah for six years (2 Kgs 11:1-3) but in that time, Joash grew up. By the seventh year, the priest Jehoiada finally unveiled him to the Carite mercenaries and the palace guards with a solemn oath:

“This is what you must do. A third of you who are on duty on the Sabbath are to guard the royal palace itself. ⁶ Another third of you are to stand guard at the Sur Gate. And the final third must stand guard behind the palace guard. These three groups will all guard the palace. ⁷ The other two units who are off duty on the Sabbath must stand guard for the king at the Lord’s Temple. ⁸ Form a bodyguard around the king and keep your weapons in hand. Kill anyone who tries to break through. Stay with the king wherever he goes.” (2 Kgs 11:5-8, NLT, m.e.)

Once full-time all-round protection was firmly in place, the public was shown Judah’s young future king in the making who survived the massacre seven years ago when Athaliah went on a vengeful rampage. In the coronation and before a joyous crowd, the priest also gave him a copy of God’s laws and then proclaimed him the rightful king (v.12).



Athaliah attempts to stop Joash's coronation (Image source: master1844-dc.blogspot.com)

Roused by the noise from the Temple, Athaliah rushed to see what the commotion was. When she saw the coronation, she shouted “Treason! Treason!” hoping to summon her guards to disrupt the ceremony and arrest everyone including Joash and the priest. To her dismay, it was she who was restrained and then taken outside the Temple gate where she was then put to death (vv.13-16).

In his 40-year reign, Joash “did what was pleasing in the Lord’s sight (2 Kgs 12:1-2). From his rule, Jerusalem benefited through his talent for organised funding. Notably, the Lord’s Temple was a chief beneficiary where money was needed to maintain it (2 Kgs 12:4-5). 

He also made sure that those who worked on the Temple maintenance were properly recompensed so as not to shame God (vv.9-14). He was also smart enough to convince the Aramite king not to invade the city by giving away sacred objects during the era of the previous kings (vv.17-18).

Set against these achievements, Joash’s reign was unfortunately mired by his failure to rid Jerusalem of the many pagan shrines and therefore his people continued to make sacrifices and offerings that displeased God (v.3). 

That did not stand him in good stead with God and once his trusted priest Jehoiada died, he became vulnerable to wicked palace advisors who also did nothing to help him dispose of the pagan shrines. In fact they managed to persuade Joash to abandon the Lord’s Temple so that the people could turn away from God (2 Chr 24:17-19).

Tragically, Joash fell prey to sinful advice and chose not to heed the prophets who were despatched by God to warn him. Now filled with evil, he ordered the prophet Zechariah stoned to death (v.21). In a shocking twist of events, it turned out that he was the son of Jehoiada, the priest who not only crowned and served him decades ago but was central in deposing Athaliah. Until Satan’s influence, he now had blood on his hands.

* Not to be confused with the person behind the Old Testament’s Book of Zechariah.

In a matter of a single decision, Joash went from hero to zero. He might’ve started well but his end was anything but. As it turned out, his own officials murdered him (2 Kgs 12:20). In the larger scheme of things, Satan failed once again because saving Joash from his grandmother’s wrath ultimately proved his undoing because that ensured that the Messiah’s covenantal line was once more restored.

The Persian subterfuge

Esther identifies Haman as the culprit (Image source: coatofmanycolors.net)

Very few people would’ve envisaged a Jewish woman helming the royal household of a defiantly pagan-worshipping empire such as Persia. As wife of the powerful King Xerxes (a.k.a. Ahasuerus), Esther was in many ways a surprising feature of Jewish history but as unthinkable as it might have been, she was very much part of God’s plans. And in equally as many ways, there is no doubt that Satan was so opposed to her fellow Jews that he found himself at the centre of Esther’s adversary, Haman.

The Book of Esther recalls that part of history where God’s people were within a hair’s breadth of a catastrophe that scale of Holocaust. In this story, Haman, a descendant of Agag, king of the Amalekites, was a powerful official in the Persian regime. Just as Esther had a story to tell from God’s viewpoint, the account of Haman’s actions reflect Satan’s resounding defeat.

As an Agagite, Haman came from descendants with a particularly dark history. These descendants were part of the larger Amalekite tribe, which were into pagan worship (Ex 17:14-16). Their enmity against the Israelites was already so well entrenched in people like Haman that revenge was all they could ever think about. Haman was that sort of person. And in Mordecai, Esther’s cousin, who was also an official within the Persian government (Est 2:19), he had an axe to grind.



Mordecai refuses to bow before Haman (Image source: Wikipedia)

Simply put, Mordecai wouldn’t put up with Haman’s hubris, meaning he refused to worship at his feet (Est 3:2-4). No matter what his position in officialdom, Mordecai would not give him the pleasure but that could also be seen as an insult that Haman could not forego without punishment. Mordecai’s refusal to be drawn to attention pushed him to want to destroy him. Discovering he was a Jew made it ‘easier’ for him to expand his plot to encompass the entire Jewish community (v.6).

And so Haman cloaked his scheme into a suggestion, which he forwarded to the king that those who refused to obey his laws should not be shown mercy:

“⁸ Then Haman approached King Xerxes and said, ‘There is a certain race of people scattered through all the provinces of your empire who keep themselves separate from everyone else. Their laws are different from those of any other people, and they refuse to obey the laws of the king. So it is not in the king’s interest to let them live. ⁹ If it please the king, issue a decree that they be destroyed, and I will give 10,000 large sacks of silver to the government administrators to be deposited in the royal treasury.’” (Est 3:8-9, NLT, m.e.)

In the king’s subsequent decree, a method was used by way of lots (called ‘purim’) where “all Jews – young and old, including women and children – must be killed, slaughtered and annihilated on a single day” (v.13). It was a shockingly cruel command and one that caused a great deal of sorrow among the Jews (v.15, 4:3). The very prospect that tens of thousands of Jews could perish as a result of this decree was obviously not lost on the community within the Persian empire.

Obviously, it didn’t take long for the news to reach Mordecai and when it did, he became distressed. Inevitably Esther came to hear of her cousin’s depression and how her own people were all in throes of deep sorrow. Amidst such a dark situation for the Jews in the land, God was in control. 

He was (in control) right from the time the king chose Esther among a harem of 400 women to be his wife and queen consort. In other words, for a Persian king to pick a Jewish woman was unprecedented especially when he wasn’t aware of her ancestry.

While God was walking Esther through her stature in life, Satan was orchestrating Haman’s. While it seemed Haman was on the ascendancy, Esther’s people appeared to be coming to terms with a massacre of untold proportions. Esther and Mordecai’s position looked hopeless. Haman’s position, on the other hand, looked unassailable. He had the king’s ear and his irreversible decree (v.12b) proved it to the extent that he and Xerxes even enjoyed a drink while the city of Susa was thrown into chaos (v.15b).

Knowing that Mordecai and all her people had reached the point of despair compelled Esther to accept that she had to “go to the king to beg for mercy and plead for her people” (Est 4:8). But, as only she knew, that was easier said than done because no one, including her, could just go and talk to the king. As she baulked at the audacity of seeking the king’s audience, Mordecai reminded her of God’s purpose in her being there at the right time and the right place:

“¹⁴ Who knows if perhaps you were made queen for just such a time as this?” (Est 4:14, NLT, m.e.)

Esther perfectly understood that in her being made queen in the Persian empire was that inherent sense of purpose and presence. She realised then that indeed, God put her in such a place to act with faith and so, she responded:

“…though it is against the law, I will go in to see the king. If I must die, I must die.” (Est 4:16b, NLT, m.e.)

And with that, God put into motion an incredibly spectacular turnaround from what looked like a helpless lost cause. Using a woman and her cousin, God delivered a plan that would cause Haman’s wicked but seemingly foolproof plan to come undone. Through two consecutive banquet invitations, Esther set up Xerxes and Haman (Est 5:4-8) that would set the Agagite for the fall.

In between the two banquet invitations, the king had a night of sleeplessness. Waking up in the middle of the night, he ordered for a record of his reign to be recited to him. This was obviously something quite odd to do but this was the beginning of God’s counteraction to unravel Haman. Quite unbelievably, it was then that Xerxes realised Mordecai’s earlier effort in staving off an assassination attempt on his life had gone unrewarded. He knew then that he had to do something to redress the situation.

Meanwhile Haman was conferring with his wife and friends about putting up a public gallows just so they could have the pleasure of witnessing Mordecai hanging off it (vv.9-14). Getting worked up about the prospect of annihilating all the Jews in the land, an excited Haman decided to hurry off to see the king. He wanted him to approve of his plans to hang Mordecai.

In a sudden confluence of contradictory ideas, Haman found himself listening to the king’s decision “to honour a man who truly pleases me” (Est 6:6) and so he didn’t have the chance to talk about the public gallows. Thinking that such a man had to be him, he told Xerxes that it would be proper to parade him through the city square in nothing less than his own royal robe and riding his own horse, proclaiming, “This is what the king does for someone he wishes to honour!” (vv.8-9)

Of course, it all sounded great but imagine Haman’s expression when the king told him that the particular man in question was actually Mordecai, the very person he wanted the king to hang him on the public gallows. Seething in hatred and anger but not wanting to let the king in on his feelings, Haman obeyed the king.

Humiliated by the sudden turn of events, he returned home and told his wife and his friends what had happened. And in completely unexpected foresight, they said to him:

“Since Mordecai—this man who has humiliated you—is of Jewish birth, you will never succeed in your plans against him. It will be fatal to continue opposing him.” (Est 6:13b, NLT, m.e.)

Tragically for Haman, he couldn’t see the deadly prophecy. And if he did, it was obvious he didn’t pay much attention at it. Not long thereafter, the king’s eunuchs arrived and took him to the second banquet (v.14) that would seal his fate. Sensing the moment had arrived, Esther told the king what he needed to know about her people:

“³ If I have found favour with the king, and if it pleases the king to grant my request, I ask that my life and the lives of my people will be spared. ⁴ For my people and I have been sold to those who would kill, slaughter, and annihilate us. If we had merely been sold as slaves, I could remain quiet, for that would be too trivial a matter to warrant disturbing the king.” (Est 7:3-4, NLT)

Taken aback by what Esther said, he wanted to know who’d dare do such a thing to her and her people. Right in the Agagite’s presence, the hater of God’s Chosen People, she said:

“This wicked Haman is our adversary and our enemy.” (v.6, NLT)

Haman's actions toward Esther seals his fate with Xerxes looking on (Image source: mediastorehouse.com)

To Haman, it must have felt like the earth below had opened up to swallow him. Quickly he got on his knees and pleaded Esther to spare his life just as the king went out to the palatial garden, likely to calm himself. Meanwhile, Haman had gotten even more desperate as he “fell on the couch where Queen Esther was reclining” (v.8). Right at that moment, the king re-entered the palace and saw Haman in his compromising position. Not surprisingly, he thought he was attempting to molest his wife.

We’d never know if Xerxes had returned to offer clemency but even if that were the case, nothing could’ve remained of such a hope. Seeing the accused in such a position doomed him once “his attendants covered Haman’s face” thus signalling the end for him.

At the same time, one of the king’s eunuchs reported to Xerxes of Haman’s 75-foot-tall sharpened pole in the courtyard of his home, which he’d intended to execute Mordecai (v.9). Nothing could have been harder for the Agagite to hear from the king than the words, “Then impale Haman on it!”

As God’s plans prevailed and Satan’s receded into failure, great things took place. Firstly, in a rare move, the king reversed his decree. Secondly, all of Haman’s properties were given to Esther. Thirdly, Mordecai took up Haman’s authority. And fourthly, with new found respect shown to Esther’s people, many of the Persians even became Jews themselves (Est 8).

Satan had what seemed an impenetrable plan but God still outmanoeuvred him. Through the story, there were many instances in which it was impossible to see God at work. Firstly, Esther was chosen to be Xerxes’ queen but no one knew she was a Jewess. And if her identity was cloaked, how would she be useful to God? 

Secondly, Haman was in a more powerful position than her cousin, Mordecai and arguably, he was closer to the king’s ear. Thirdly, a Persian king’s signet ring once used would’ve meant an irreversible decree. In other words, that proclamation in almost every situation would have signalled the death of all Jews in the land.

All three points make Haman’s plot impregnable. Understandably, Satan would’ve felt the same. What no one saw in the first place was how God was so many steps ahead when He positioned an innocent Jewish girl to be a pagan king’s queen.

The plan to stop Jesus’ birth

What a church of Satan looks like on the inside (Image source: chaostrophic.com)

From his fall from grace before the world began, Satan has since been unequivocally known as “the prince of the power of the air.” Here’s where we get the phrase from:

“And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins; ² Wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience: ³ Among whom also we all had our conversation in times past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind; and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others.” (Eph 2:1-3, KJV, m.e.)

And here’s how the more contemporary NLT version calls it:

“Once you were dead because of your disobedience and your many sins. ² You used to live in sin, just like the rest of the world, obeying the devil – the commander of the powers in the unseen world. He is the spirit at work in the hearts of those who refuse to obey God. ³ All of us used to live that way, following the passionate desires and inclinations of our sinful nature. By our very nature we were subject to God’s anger, just like everyone else.” (Eph 2:1-3, NLT)

In this passage of his letter to the Ephesians, the apostle Paul described Satan as a “prince” or a “commander,” one who is powerful (1 Jn 5:19) but ‘unseen by human eyes’ (which is what “air” is taken to mean). Why he didn’t refer to him as a king but a prince is easy – there is but only one King and He is Jesus Christ (1 Tim 6:15). In case the reader is unaware, Satan’s power does come exclusively from the King Himself, God:

“⁵ Then the devil took Him up and revealed to Him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time. ⁶ ‘I will give you the glory of these kingdoms and authority over them,’ the devil said, ‘because they are mine to give to anyone I please.’” (Lk 4:5-6, NLT, m.e.)

In a moment of insanity, the devil had the audacity to make offers to Jesus although his motive was to destroy Him. As the passage says, his authority over the kingdoms “are mine to give.” That authority obviously comes from a higher power and that is God Himself.

As mentioned above, the part that says, “the air” is a reference to what is ‘unseen by human eyes,’ which is another way of referring to the spiritual realm above the Earth. This is the invisible part of our life that can play havoc with us. This is also where Satan and his army of fallen angels inhabit, move and disrupt our spiritual wellbeing.

Yet, this space we speak of is in a location well within Earth’s atmosphere. That is why Paul used the word “air.” As Paul mentioned four chapters later in the same letter:

“¹¹ Put on all of God’s armour so that you will be able to stand firm against all strategies of the devil. ¹² For we are not fighting against flesh-and-blood enemies, but against evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, against mighty powers in this dark world, and against evil spirits in the heavenly places.” (Eph 6:11-12, NLT, m.e.)

Very interestingly, he describes his earlier use of the word “air” using three definitions that all point back to the same place. The “unseen world” or “this dark world” or “the heavenly places” all bear reference to the foreboding spiritual realm where warfare has been waged since time began. Even the apostle John equates the “air” with the “world”:

“‘³¹ The time for judging this world has come, when Satan, the ruler of this world, will be cast out. ³² And when I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw everyone to Myself.’” (Jn 12:31-32, NLT, m.e.)

In other words, how John uses the word alludes to the entire world being the devil’s playground. Matthew, by the way, also referred to it in much the same way (Mt 4:8-9).

Satan’s power is prodigious enough to be of great concern to all of us. Recall the story of a woman whom Jesus healed on Sabbath while teaching in a synagogue (Lk 13:10-17). Here was someone whose back was bent so badly for eighteen years by some evil spirit that she could not stand upright. Although such crippling condition is easily healed by Jesus, it would undoubtedly be physically excruciating for any of us to cope with.

Paul’s mention of his own thorn in the flesh (2 Cor 12:7) may or may not be some sort of illness but we’ll never know. And yet, he describes this thorn as “a messenger from Satan to torment me and keep me from becoming proud.” Also in a way as well, the devil also has power over death as Paul wrote:

“¹⁴ Because God’s children are human beings – made of flesh and blood – the Son also became flesh and blood. For only as a human being could He die, and only by dying could He break the power of the devil, who had the power of death. ¹⁵ Only in this way could he set free all who have lived their lives as slaves to the fear of dying.” (Heb 2:14-15, NLT, m.e.)

As it is with death, Satan’s grip over some people is indeed extraordinarily powerful. Scripture offers some useful references here:

“He is the spirit at work in the hearts of those who refuse to obey God.” (Eph 2:2, NLT, m.e.)

In the original KJV translation, “those who refuse to obey God” are referred to as “sons of disobedience.” In other words, they are those among us who choose not to place their trust on Christ as Lord and Saviour.

“¹⁷ And I will rescue you from both your own people and the Gentiles. Yes, I am sending you to the Gentiles ¹⁸ to open their eyes, so they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God. Then they will receive forgiveness for their sins and be given a place among God’s people, who are set apart by faith in Me.’” (Acts 26:17-18, NLT, m.e.)

The apostle Luke reported Jesus describing the “sons of disobedience” as those who are in darkness and subject to the power of Satan who need to turn to the light of God and “receive forgiveness for their sins.” Paul refers to them as those “who are perishing” and who are not privy to the Good News preached because their blinded minds prevent them from believing. And in their disobedience, they are not capable of experiencing the joy of the Good News let alone understand any of its messages: 

“³ If the Good News we preach is hidden behind a veil, it is hidden only from people who are perishing. ⁴ Satan, who is the god of this world, has blinded the minds of those who don’t believe. They are unable to see the glorious light of the Good News. They don’t understand this message about the glory of Christ, who is the exact likeness of God.” (2 Cor 4:3-4, NLT, m.e.)

Satan’s henchmen, his demons, are all under his rule. They all do his evil bidding. The apostle Matthew recorded the Pharisees as referring to him as “the prince of demons” (Mt 12:24, 9:34). And as Jesus said later in the same passage, Satan has his own kingdom (Mt 12:26) and possesses a throne, which Jesus mentioned was in the city of Pergamum (Rev 2:13) or for that matter, in whichever part of the world that his evil is predominant.

Satan’s power and authority are impressive by human standards and with the world as his playground, he wreaks so much havoc that much of Earth creaks under the burden of his evil. Yet he has nothing that God in His sovereignty cannot rein in (Job 1:12). With his wickedness, Satan is definitely influential but that is only because God allows him so. Still we need to be reminded that his evilness is neither permanent nor forever (Rom 16:20).

Perhaps the challenge for all of us is that we are not told as to when Satan’s world dominance will come to an end. Because the Lord has not revealed the date, some of us have been investing a lot of time and effort in guessing and predicting. It’s a thriving industry but it’s not productive because God has said under no uncertain terms that He has made a way for us to escape Satan’s grip.  

That way is through His Son, Jesus Christ (Acts 26:18, Col 1:13-14) who in view of the Cross, said victoriously and unequivocally:

“³¹ The time for judging this world has come, when Satan, the ruler of this world, will be cast out.” (Jn 12:31, NLT, m.e.)

In Jesus’ own words, Satan “will be cast out.” That means his reign will finally be over and never to be repeated ever again. But all this has to have a beginning point. This is where Jesus must be born in this world for it is His birth that begins His mission to stop the devil once and for all.

This prince of the air is aware of this though he didn’t know the full extent of it. He knew enough to do all he could to prevent Jesus from being born. His birth, in other words, had to be stopped at all cost. Some believe that he even had knowledge of the archangel Gabriel visiting Nazareth. Whether or not that is true doesn’t seem material because all the same, he couldn’t quite put his finger on it.

Invariably, as it always has been, God is steps ahead of Satan. Through the passages of time, we have witnessed all sorts of schemes and plots but come what may, evil always succumbs to the power of God’s pure goodness. It might come close but God always prevails. We saw in Esther’s case how razor-sharp the margins of error were but God was in control. The same thing occurred at the Red Sea. Just when the people were flailing arms and giving up, God still had an ace up His arm.



Mary is visited by the archangel Gabriel (Image source: Pinterest)

And so when the Lord chose Mary to be the earthly mother to Jesus, He set into motion the world’s biggest and historically, the most significant pursuit. The moment Mary was visited by Gabriel to be told of God’s plans for her (Lk 1:26-38), the race was on for Satan to deny Jesus His birth. When Joseph discovered that Mary was pregnant with child, the Lord has to deal with the risk that their betrothal could be annulled (Mt 1:19-21).

Next came the imposition of taxes against those born in their own cities. Caesar Augustus launched his decree that resulted in censuses for every city and town throughout the land (Lk 2:1-3) thus forcing Joseph and Mary to make the long arduous trek from Nazareth to Bethlehem, a journey through treacherously mountainous country stretching more than a hundred miles and pockmarked with robbers and thieves looking for unwitting victims.

Throughout the journey, Joseph walked while the pregnant Mary was perched atop their solitary donkey. No doubt this was a trek someone like Mary in her condition shouldn’t be doing. The risks were extremely high. The possibility of a miscarriage could never be dismissed. Anything could happen that could rob them of their lives. But given no choice by Caesar’s decree, the trip was unavoidable. It doesn’t take much to imagine Satan salivating at the thought that this young couple could actually meet their death. And Jesus would then not be born.

What a miracle then that Joseph and Mary made it safely to Bethlehem but that was just the start. More obstacles laid their way that they had yet to encounter. Exhausted and hungry on arrival, Mary was also very advanced in her pregnancy. Yet they knew not where they would be spending the night let alone find a suitable place for the childbirth to take place. And this one proved a formidable challenge.

Scripture offers us an impression that such a search would be all but impossible. There are a few possible reasons why but none were actually offered by any of the Gospel writers. One belief was that because Mary was pregnant but not married yet to Joseph, Bethlehemites were not ready to share their stigma, meaning most were unwilling to offer the couple a place to lie over.

There is another belief that such stigma could not have applied because Joseph was a local and locals didn’t treat one another with such disdain back then. In the third claim, his fellow Bethlehemites would have been keenly aware that Joseph was also of royal blood (Lk 2:4), meaning that he came from the revered line of David. With such fame attached to him, it’s hard to imagine he would be poorly treated. In that sense, how we interpret Scripture might not necessarily be correct.

Fourthly, Mary was so pregnant that it was hard not to notice. That large bump she was carrying would have told anyone that there was an urgency to find them accommodation. And besides, here’s a passage that might shed some light as to Joseph actually having enough time to find suitable arrangements for the both of them. For Mary, her relatives in Judea weren’t too far away from Bethlehem if that was where they’d prefer to go:

“⁴ And because Joseph was a descendant of King David, he had to go to Bethlehem in Judea, David’s ancient home. He travelled there from the village of Nazareth in Galilee. ⁵ He took with him Mary, to whom he was engaged, who was now expecting a child.” (Lk 2:4-5, NLT, m.e.)

In yet another interpretation, there might be a translation problem concerning the word ‘inn.’ It is possible that the original Greek meaning during the time of Jesus might not be faithfully followed or understood within its correct cultural context. And because Aramaic as spoken by the Jews then – despite Greek being the official lingua franca – translation difficulties might have arisen.



A typical Israelite home during Jesus' days (Image source: firstcenturypalestinejl.weebly.com)

When we speak of an inn today, we imagine it to be an old-fashioned word for hotel, hostel, motel or a guesthouse. In other words, we envision it to be a place with plenty of rooms available where one pays to stay at for a certain short period of time. However, back in Jesus’ days, an inn might actually mean something else.

For example, the ‘inn’ that is mentioned in the Parable of the Good Samaritan (Lk 10:30-37) might offer us some clue. Here, Jesus talked about how the kind Samaritan paid “the innkeeper” for looking after the injured Jewish man (vv.34b-35). It’s doubtful we can find innkeepers today who will offer such personal services as the Parable suggests back then. This little difference is enough to indicate that possibly, the word ‘inn’ should be interpreted a little differently.

So let’s return to the nativity scene and try to understand the word ‘inn’ once more.

Here, Luke describes the nativity scene and in it, he used words that could shed some light:

“⁷ She gave birth to her firstborn son. She wrapped Him snugly in strips of cloth and laid Him in a manger, because there was no lodging available for them.” (Lk 2:7, NLT, m.e.)

In the original Greek, the word ‘inn’ as used in this context is exegetically distinctive. We see this quite clearly in this passage said by Jesus:

“¹⁰ He replied, “As soon as you enter Jerusalem, a man carrying a pitcher of water will meet you. Follow him. At the house he enters, ¹¹ say to the owner, ‘The Teacher asks: Where is the guest room where I can eat the Passover meal with My disciples?’ ¹² He will take you upstairs to a large room that is already set up. That is where you should prepare our meal.” (Lk 22:10-12, NLT, m.e.)

The phrase ‘guest room’ is derived from the Greek word κατάλυμα (pr. katalyma) to mean a particular type of dining enclosure that is more akin to a guest chamber. In Luke’s previous passage (2:7), the same word κατάλυμα is used but scholars inform us that the meaning is a little different because here, it relates to a break point midway through a journey. In that sense, it is more of an inn or a lodging place than a dining enclosure.

As you will see, it gets more complex.

Back then, Mid-Eastern dwellings feature only two rooms; one the family room while the other the stable for animals and their feedstock. Even so, households commonly move their animals into their family rooms because they’d provide much-needed warmth particularly during cold winter nights. And because of this, it wouldn’t then be a surprise to find mangers dug out of the ground or made from wood so that animals could have their feedstock. In other words, where the manger was, that could be the family room and not quite the stable.

Given that possibility, one other thing might help us to understand the nativity scene a little differently:

As one belief suggests earlier, Bethlehemites would have recognised David as from the royal line and that Mary was about to give birth. Both of these points would have raised some alarm for the locals to do something and help. Speed was the essence, given that Mary was really in need. If this interpretation sounds plausible enough, then it is quite possible that one family could have given up their own sleeping space so that Mary could give birth to Jesus.

As this point, we’re simply only looking at possible interpretation issues. This is not about rewriting Scripture but more about how words with ancient contexts might not be what we think they mean today. And as a result, there is a possibility, no matter how remote, that a story such as the birth of Jesus might have had received a less hostile reception than we might have thought.

It is therefore also possible that even a lowly village like Bethlehem could have accommodated this young couple because there was a need to come to the aid of a very pregnant Mary. Like the shepherds who were told, like the wise men who, too, were told, the story of Christmas might actually be more pleasant than how it’s been interpreted. But in the end, admittedly, we don’t really know for sure.

And if we all think that the misinterpretation did take place, then we can consider the possibility that Satan wanted us to believe that even the Jews themselves could be so hostile against their fellow kind, Joseph and Mary. By hijacking the narrative, we are to believe that even at such an early stage, the Jews were unwittingly sabotaging the birth of Christ.

Herod’s plan to kill Jesus

A motion picture impression of Herod the Great (Image source: joeybonifacio.com)

1,400 years prior to the birth of Christ, Satan had already tried mass murder. At that time, he worked through Pharaoh to kill Jewish babies to lessen the threat of numbers against his rule. Now, he was at it again but this time, his instrument was the Edomite Herod the Great. Through his command, all boys up to the age of two in Bethlehem and along its coast must be killed (Mt 2:16).

Following the birth of baby Jesus, wise men from afar flocked into Bethlehem to worship “the newborn king of the Jews” (v.2) but not before they stopped over in Jerusalem. Alarmed by the birth of a “king of the Jews,” Herod’s interest perked up not because he was keen to visit Jesus but because he was intimidated enough.

And so he convened privately with the wise men (v.7) in order to learn as much as he could about this baby boy he knew so little about. But because he had no idea where Jesus was, he cunningly invited the wise men to return after their visit and tell him His whereabouts so that he could “go and worship Him too!” (v.8)

Unaware of his evil, they said they would but God warned them in their dreams “not to return” but to take a separate route back to their own country (v.12). Shortly after their departure, an angel of the Lord also went before Joseph in a dream to caution him to leave immediately for Egypt with his family (v.13). Not only did they flee straightaway but they stayed beyond Herod’s reach until he died (v.15).

Satan was again stymied. First, Caesar’s decree forced Joseph and Mary to make the long trip from Nazareth to Bethlehem. That didn’t work because God protected them all the way. Secondly, Herod connived to get the wise men to tell him of Jesus’ whereabouts. That didn’t work because in their dreams, God told them not to return and divulge the location. 

Thirdly, Herod’s murderous plot was not something Joseph and Mary were aware of and they were about to walk straight into his trap. That in the end didn’t work because Joseph managed to immediately escape to Egypt thanks to the angel of the Lord who told him to do so in his dream. 

All of these events weren’t just proof of Satan’s ruthlessness but they were also a fulfilment of what God had foretold through the prophet Hosea:

“When Israel was a child, I loved him, and I called My Son out of Egypt.” (Hos 11:1, NLT)

Herod was naturally angered. Outdone by the wise men who wised up to his cunning, he decided to cast a bigger net by killing all male toddlers no older than two years old in and around Bethlehem. That way, he hoped that Jesus would be among those killed (v.16). By the time his soldiers arrived, Jesus was of course long gone but tragically, countless little boys would’ve been murdered because of Herod.

Satan’s action cost the lives of many innocent children. This alone couldn’t have gone down well with God.

Interestingly, the apostle John was given a similar vision of Satan looking to destroy Jesus:

“³ Then I witnessed in heaven another significant event. I saw a large red dragon with seven heads and ten horns, with seven crowns on his heads. ⁴ His tail swept away one-third of the stars in the sky, and he threw them to the earth. He stood in front of the woman as she was about to give birth, ready to devour her baby as soon as it was born.” (Rev 12:4, NLT, m.e.)

In this revelation, the hideous “red dragon” is Satan while the “woman” who “was about to give birth” is Israel. The “baby” whom Satan is “ready to devour” is none other than Jesus Christ.

The revelation continues here:

“⁵ She gave birth to a Son who was to rule all nations with an iron rod. And her child was snatched away from the dragon and was caught up to God and to His throne. ⁶ And the woman fled into the wilderness, where God had prepared a place to care for her for 1,260 days.” (Rev 12:5-6, NLT, m.e.)

Jesus was to reign supreme over all nations and He will do that “with an iron rod.” In the above revelation, just as Satan was about to get to Him, He was “caught up to God and to His throne.” In other words, the devil has once again failed to destroy the Messiah.

The paradox of the Cross

Death has no power over a resurrected Christ (Image source: Youtube)

Jesus has proven to be an elusive target for Satan. Try as he might over a millennia, he still couldn’t hold Him down. And he’ll never ever. Yet none of his past failures deterred him. Instead he took his fury all the way to the Cross when he finally witnessed Jesus nailed to His death in between two common thieves. It was something he had long cherished and now this had to be the climax for him.  

Up until then, Satan tried many times to trap Jesus during His earthly ministry. None of them worked. Jesus was simply too formidable for him to do that to. But then, in Judas Iscariot, Satan found someone with a vulnerable spot that he could exploit (Mt 26:14-16). Judas’ Achilles Heel made it possible for the devil to undermine and in the end, it was his betrayal that ultimately led Jesus to the Cross.

With Jesus’ death at the Cross, Satan’s job was finished. God appeared finally defeated. And with that, a weakened God should be ripe pickings for him. He could now usurp His heavenly throne and rule the Universe as he dreamed. With Jesus out of the way and the Father’s power waned, it should be easy.

Satan could now look back to the thousands of years of humiliating failures and know that they were all worth it because they have all led him to his finest hour. And Judas delivered what he desired so desperately. Never mind that the betrayer ultimately betrayed his own self by sending Jesus to His death. 

Realising his life was essentially over, Judas hanged himself (Mt 27:3-5). Satan wasn’t the sentimental kind to worry over someone he could just use and throw away like a rag. Judas’ death was no different from the millions he had exploited centuries past. 

Oh what sweet victory for Satan to see his avowed enemy, the Lord Jesus Christ die on the Cross. He enjoyed watching every minute of His slow death. He laboured so much just to get to this point. It had to be worth everything to him. Yet strangely, Satan realised he didn’t know enough to understand why Jesus was so willing to die on the Cross. He suddenly began to wonder why He didn’t resist when He could have just as easily done that.

Satan remembered that at Gethsemane, Jesus did say the following:

“‘⁵³ Don’t you realise that I could ask My Father for thousands of angels to protect us, and He would send them instantly? ⁵⁴ But if I did, how would the Scriptures be fulfilled that describe what must happen now?’” (Mt 26:53-54, NLT, m.e.)

In other words, Jesus dying on the Cross was too good to be true. Satan began to wonder that there was something to His death that didn’t add up because he assumed that death was death; there was no other way to define it. When someone dies, he dies and that’s the end of it. He doesn’t come back alive. Incapacitated in death, a person becomes useless. It was plainly obvious that Satan missed reading the fine print about Jesus’ episode in bringing Lazarus (Jn 11:1-44) and the little 12-year-old girl (Mk 5:35-43) back to life during His ministry.

What was supposedly the sweet smell of victory turned awry once Satan understood that Jesus’ death freed the human race from the bondage of sin and the death penalty. Ultimately he failed to appreciate that as the Son of God, nothing could hold Him back; not even death:

“I am the Living One. I died, but look – I am alive forever and ever! And I hold the keys of death and the grave.” (Rev 1:18, NLT, m.e.)

Jesus is the Living God. He is the Eternal One. Through Him, we have eternal life. Through Him, we die only once:

“I tell you the truth, anyone who believes has eternal life.” (Jn 6:47, NLT, m.e.)

Jesus did not cheat death to attain eternal life. Not like someone who faces certain death by firing squad and somehow receives a pardon at the very last minute. No, Jesus is the Living God. He has no need to cheat death because death has no power over Him. Death cannot vanquish the Living Christ. The fact was simple – Satan underestimated the power Jesus has over life and death.



"It is the one to whom I give the bread I dip in the bowl" (Image source: mitchchase.wordpress.com)

Although that is true, no one can deny that Satan was right at the centre of the betrayal, arrest, torturing and finally, the execution. In every instant, he was the chief supreme orchestrator. Perhaps the climactic example of Satan’s insidiousness was during Jesus’ final supper with His disciples:

“²¹ Now Jesus was deeply troubled, and He exclaimed, ‘I tell you the truth, one of you will betray Me!’ ²² The disciples looked at each other, wondering whom He could mean. ²³ The disciple Jesus loved was sitting next to Jesus at the table. ²⁴ Simon Peter motioned to Him to ask, ‘Who’s He talking about?’ ²⁵ So that disciple leaned over to Jesus and asked, ‘Lord, who is it?’ ²⁶ Jesus responded, ‘It is the one to whom I give the bread I dip in the bowl.’ And when he had dipped it, he gave it to Judas, son of Simon Iscariot. ²⁷ When Judas had eaten the bread, Satan entered into him. Then Jesus told him, ‘Hurry and do what you’re going to do.’ ²⁸ None of the others at the table knew what Jesus meant.” (Jn 13:18-28, NLT, m.e.)

That part of the passage that says, “Satan entered into him” is as spinechilling as one can get. This is the evil craft that defines Satan’s power to corrupt. When evil entered Judas’ mind, he became the betrayer. Luke also said something quite similar:

“Then Satan entered into Judas Iscariot, who was one of the twelve disciples, ⁴ and he went to the leading priests and captains of the Temple guard to discuss the best way to betray Jesus to them.” (Lk 22:3-4, NLT, m.e.)

Here is the conundrum for Satan: We know he can’t wait to destroy Jesus (Rev 12:4) but then on the other hand, to do that would be the final undoing of Satan himself. That’s because destroying Jesus will never fulfil his own objective. If Satan destroys Jesus, he is, in effect, handing the opportunity to the Son of God to prove that death is powerless on Him.

When we understand this paradox, we come to the point of realising that Satan is in an ever-losing proposition. Here’s what Paul said about Satan’s ultimate failure:

“¹³ You were dead because of your sins and because your sinful nature was not yet cut away. Then God made you alive with Christ, for He forgave all our sins. ¹⁴ He cancelled the record of the charges against us and took it away by nailing it to the cross. ¹⁵ In this way, He disarmed the spiritual rulers and authorities. He shamed them publicly by His victory over them on the cross.” (Col 2:13-15, NLT, m.e.)

The important parts of the passage alludes to the power of the Cross of Christ. Paul emphasises how Jesus “cancelled the record of the charges against us and took it away by nailing it to the cross.” By dying on the Cross, Jesus made it possible for all of us to have our sins washed away by the blood of Christ. By His death on the Cross, Jesus turned defeat to victory and in the process, “disarmed [and shamed] the spiritual rulers and authorities.”

As many know how to say, “Be careful what you wish for.” In Satan’s case, his long-held desire was to see Jesus destroyed. That has always been what he’d wished for. And now his wish has come true – Jesus died. On the Cross and by that, He cancelled out our debt and had them all nailed to the Cross. He did that so that we could enjoy eternity with Him. Through His victory at the Cross, we can claim the promise of salvation that only He could offer:

“I am the way, the truth and the life. No one can come to the Father except through Me.” (Jn 14:6, NLT, m.e.)

It was the very last thing Satan expected from Jesus. That death became the perfect opportunity for the Son of God to reveal His power to resurrect. That was all it took to silence him. In masterminding Jesus’ death at the cross, Satan simply made it easier for Him to fulfil prophecy. In effect, therefore, Satan did everything he could to undo his own motives.

All of this begs the obvious question – why? Why do the very thing that would unravel your own self?

After all, no one can ever deny that Satan was very intelligent. But then if he was that intelligent, how could he not foresee God’s plan? How could he let something like this happen that invariably would lead to his own demise? Scholars appear to agree on three possible reasons why:

Submissiveness

Some scholars think that because God was sovereign, He could easily twist Satan’s hand into crucifying Jesus. In other words, he didn’t act on his own free will and he couldn’t get away from doing it either. Since God is always in control, fulfilling prophecy was simply a matter of deciding who He would use to do His bidding.

Perhaps this passage says it all:

“²³ But God knew what would happen, and His prearranged plan was carried out when Jesus was betrayed. With the help of lawless Gentiles, you nailed Him to a cross and killed Him. ²⁴ But God released Him from the horrors of death and raised Him back to life, for death could not keep Him in its grip.” (Acts 2:23-24, NLT, m.e.)

Luke’s keyword here is “prearranged,” taken to mean preordained, prescribed or pre-planned. Whatever the word you prefer, it suggests that God had a script to work on and that was how the cookies crumbled. And Satan was a mere pawn in the whole big picture.

Sadism

Scholars here focus on the very fact that Satan has a huge axe to grind. Ever since the pre-Adamaic period, he had been at war with God. With his fallen angels, Satan has been obsessed with destroying Him and in his never-ending rage, anger and hatred, he probably couldn’t help himself.

In other words, nothing could stop him from wanting to see Jesus dead. Even if doing so would gift the Son of God the perfect opportunity to save humanity. Even if it meant that man would be saved from the precipice when his original intention was simply to destroy everything that God loved.

Scripture does substantiate Satan’s character as someone bent on destruction at all costs:

“⁴⁴ For you are the children of your father the devil, and you love to do the evil things he does. He was a murderer from the beginning. He has always hated the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, it is consistent with his character; for he is a liar and the father of lies.” (Jn 8:44, NLT, m.e.)

For someone as murderous as Satan, there is no remorse. He kills because it is in his sadistic nature to. If destruction brings him joy, that is precisely what he would do. That means he will lie if it suits him to. Remember that the Bible calls him, “the father of lies” and rightly so. Given his deceptive nature, Satan’s evil is limitless.

Therefore, the irony is Satan knew about the Cross and its implications and yet he risked his own doom purely because his sadism offers him unparalleled pleasure. He enjoyed watching Jesus die on the Cross and he wouldn’t trade that for anything else. When it comes to watching the Son of God bleed to His death nailed to the Cross, resistance was futile.

Seizure

More traditional scholars look to Gustaf Aulén’s canvassing of the idea of ‘Christus Victor’ as the answer. Latin for ‘Christ the Conqueror,’ Aulén cites the Early Church Fathers’ concept of atonement, asserting that, “the work of Christ is first and foremost a victory over the powers which hold mankind in bondage: sin, death and the devil.”

Anselmo d’Aosta (or Anselm of Canterbury)’s Satisfaction Theory, on the other hand, proposes that Christ was compelled to die in order to restore God’s honour so tarnished by man’s debauchery. As an extension of Anselm’s Satisfaction Theory is the Reformer’s Penal Substitution Theory where Jesus was punished for the sake of justice and that God’s just punishment of sin was satiated by Christ in order that punishment would not be levelled at humanity.

Of these three concepts, it is Christus Victor that lends credence to the presumption that Satan could actually hold Jesus down in death. We know that to be untrue. In fact, he couldn’t. But mainly, Satan completely underestimated the Lord’s power to resurrect:

“¹⁴ Because God’s children are human beings – made of flesh and blood – the Son also became flesh and blood. For only as a human being could He die, and only by dying could He break the power of the devil, who had the power of death. ¹⁵ Only in this way could He set free all who have lived their lives as slaves to the fear of dying.” (Heb 2:14-15, NLT, m.e.)

When all’s said and done, all three theories carry their own weight. There is no doubting that each of them is valid in its own right. But as credible as these theories may sound, perhaps Satan really hadn’t a clue what would happen once he crucified Jesus.

Satan’s own struggles

Jesus raises Jairus' daughter (Image source: iconsandimagery.blogspot.com)

Jesus didn’t just rise from the dead on the third day but He also had the power to bring people alive. The Bible recalls several examples of this. In fact by Him beating death, Jesus showed us evidence that we too can be like Him if we accept Him as our Saviour. Today, this is the cornerstone of Christianity. Yet back then, it seemed Satan underestimated Jesus’ resurrection powers.

In fact, well before Jesus demonstrated such powers (Jn 11:38-44, Mk 5:35-43), there were already prophecies recorded in the Old Testament to which Satan would have access to the same way we have. In other words, if everyone else then could read about and learn from them, surely he could have done the same. It shouldn’t be too much to expect someone as intelligence as Satan to have prior knowledge of Jesus’ powers to resurrect.

Scripture teaches us that shortly after Jesus’ baptism, his encounter with Him in the desert revealed such knowledge:

“³ During that time the devil came and said to Him, ‘If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become loaves of bread.’” (Mt 4:3, NLT, m.e.)

And also here:

“⁶ If you are the Son of God, jump off! For the Scriptures say, ‘He will order His angels to protect You. And they will hold You up with their hands so You won’t even hurt Your foot on a stone.’” (Mt 4:6, NLT, m.e.)

Not only did Satan acknowledge that Jesus was the Son of God; he showed that he knew Scripture quite well. He was even able to recite Psalm 91:11-12 (ibid) ad verbatim. As we can see in the above passage, he certainly was proficient enough in Scripture to twist God’s word to suit his purpose. So right now, the issue is whether or not Satan’s understanding of Scripture was enough to prepare him for Jesus’ mission to resurrect Himself.

Perhaps, Satan is just like so many of us – he may be aware of the various prophecies but he might not always or fully understand them. After all, many of us fall in this category also. We read but that doesn’t necessarily mean we grasp the full meaning or significance. In fact, so many of us read and end up misinterpreting!

When we look back at biblical history, we come across many occasions of normal people struggling to come to terms with what Jesus said. And that includes His own disciples who couldn’t cope with His teachings, much less His prophecies. And sure enough, the Pharisees and the scribes were no different. In fact, exactly how many people did Scripture record could properly understand everything that Jesus said during his earthly ministry? And I mean ‘everything’?

A good case in point was when Jesus rode into Jerusalem riding a donkey (Mk 11:7). It wasn’t something people were expecting because they could not come to grips with Jesus’ concept of the Suffering Servant. They had assumed Jesus would ride into town looking like a knight in shining armour; maybe even riding a white stallion and looking fittingly like a powerful Conquering King. 

If David did looked like a warrior about 1,000 years earlier – and he too was a King – what more Jesus whom the people saw as their gallant ‘saviour’ against the Romans?

In yet another example, after Jesus fed a crowd of five thousand with just five barley loaves and two fishes (Mt 14:13-21), the people were overwhelmed by the miracle and they exclaimed, “Surely He is the Prophet we have been expecting!” (Jn 6:14, NLT) But of course, that wasn’t all. Check out what they actually wanted to do to Jesus:

“¹⁵ When Jesus saw that they were ready to force Him to be their king, He slipped away into the hills by Himself.” (Jn 6:15, NLT, m.e.)

Just as normal people make gaffes or misconstrue what they read, Satan could have done the same. As smart as we know him to be, misreading cues can happen to him or any of us. Remember, only God is perfect. So, there is never any guarantee that even someone like Satan can perfectly anticipate everything in life.

In the most important aspect of the Good News, there is a distinct possibility that Satan didn’t think of the very idea that Jesus was born simply to die. That the Messiah came to Earth to save us but with a twist – Jesus’ offered us salvation by dying on the Cross so that He could defeat death and opened the way for all of us to be saved. The core of the Good News was that He died and rose again. But it was the dying part that confused so many, including Satan.

It is a fair thought that as the Messiah, Jesus was supposed to project military power and lead His people in an armed struggle against the Romans. The idea was to liberate His people in the most visibly convincing way and what can be more convincing than by way of military conquest! In all probability, that could be what Satan thought would unfold.

Keep in mind, therefore, what Isaiah 53 prophesied about Christ. Many scholars believe that back then, Judaism did not interpret that verse as the death and resurrection of the Messiah. Neither did the Sanhedrin see it as suffering. Drowned in profuse legalism, there is no way possible for the Jewish leaders to view Jesus as anything close to the Messiah. Rather, the Son of God was no more than a nuisance and an obstacle to the way they ruled over the people.



The Suffering Servant in the motion picture, 'Passion of the Christ' (Image source: lambertplanet.blogspot.com)

In fact, D.A. Carson agreed:

“There does not seem to be an unambiguous pre-Christian source within Judaism that identifies the Suffering Servant of Isa. 53 with the anticipated Messiah.” (Baker, 2007)

Quite tragically, it was only after His death at the Cross – and His subsequent resurrection – that His disciples began to understand what Jesus had said and predicted. To underline this point, remember the time when Christ spoke about His impending death before a growing crowd:

“‘³⁰ The voice was for your benefit, not Mine. ³¹ The time for judging this world has come, when Satan, the ruler of this world, will be cast out. ³² And when I am lifted up from the Earth, I will draw everyone to Myself.’ ³³ He said this to indicate how He was going to die.” (Jn 12:30-33, NLT, m.e.)

At the core of their confusion was Jesus saying He would be “lifted up from the Earth.” They had very little idea what that actually meant even though He intimated that He “was going to die.” No matter what, the people remained confounded:

“‘³⁴ We understood from Scripture that the Messiah would live forever. How can you say the Son of Man will die? Just who is this Son of Man, anyway?’” (Jn 12:34, NLT, m.e.)

Here is an interesting passage. “We understood from Scripture” offers us a glimpse of the Jews believing they understood what they read but in reality, they had not. “How can you say” reinforces the very fact that they found what Jesus said to be unacceptable when compared to what “we understood.” “Just who is” confirms the fact that in actuality, they really have no idea what Jesus had just told them.

This struggle wasn’t just limited to the people who came to listen to Jesus’ ministry. His disciples were also notoriously known for this. Take Simon Peter for example. After Judas left the room during the final support, Jesus said:

“‘³³ Dear children, I will be with you only a little longer. And as I told the Jewish leaders, you will search for Me, but you can’t come where I am going.’” (Jn 13:33, NLT, m.e.)

Simon Peter had difficulties with this. Predictably then, he questioned Jesus, asking, “Lord, where are You going?” (v.36) The Lord chose not to answer his question but then he persisted and asked once again: “But why can’t I come now, Lord?” (v.37) By repeatedly asking, Simon Peter proved his lack of understanding.

Even the Lord’s cousin, John the Baptist, a remarkably righteous man himself, struggled to fully understand His mission on Earth. Though he did declare that He was “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” (Jn 1:29, NLT), he remained unsure – even sceptical, perhaps – as to His true identity. When he was in prison about to be executed, he even sent his disciples to verify if indeed Jesus was who He said He was:

“² John the Baptist, who was in prison, heard about all the things the Messiah was doing. So he sent his disciples to ask Jesus, ³ ‘Are you the Messiah we’ve been expecting, or should we keep looking for someone else?’” (Mt 11:2-3, NLT, m.e.)

If Simon Peter and John the Baptist had difficulties understanding, rest be assured that the other disciples wouldn’t likely to have found it any easier. Luke’s Gospel reveals the extent to which Jesus spoke about His impending death and resurrection (Lk 18:31-33). One would assume that given the details that the Lord went into concerning the subject, someone might understand but that didn’t appear to be the case:

“But they didn’t understand any of this. The significance of His words was hidden from them, and they failed to grasp what He was talking about.” (Lk 18:34, NLT, m.e.)

Hindsight is a beautiful thing. Two thousand years later, we can pick up a Study or an Application Bible and come to grips with what Jesus meant by the things He said concerning His death and resurrection. Sidebar information would lend great support in helping us to understand. There’re plenty of additional information available on the Internet and in church, there are enough Bible Study opportunities to make sure anyone interested – believer or otherwise – understands. But the disciples then had none of these luxuries.

But as the passage above reveals, what Jesus had said was not something they understood because the truth behind His message was deliberately cloaked. That means He had a reason for hiding it but essentially, what was it that Jesus hid from the disciples?

The Gospel, of course. That the message of the Gospel would be the culmination of His death and resurrection at the Cross (Lk 18:31-33) was what the disciples couldn’t understand, let alone accept. Yet, that was exactly what Paul wrote so clearly about in his letter to the Corinthians (1 Cor 15:3-4).

So, all twelve disciples were as blind to the truth as any of us before we were converted. Without conversion, a person will be blind to the truth of the Gospel. Paul explains that Satan plays a role in this blindness:

“³ If the Good News we preach is hidden behind a veil, it is hidden only from people who are perishing. ⁴ Satan, who is the god of this world, has blinded the minds of those who don’t believe. They are unable to see the glorious light of the Good News. They don’t understand this message about the glory of Christ, who is the exact likeness of God.” (2 Cor 4:3-4, NLT, m.e.)

Three years of ministry directly from the Lord Himself and the disciples remain blinded to the message He preached. In other words, after three years of being with Jesus, they were still unconverted in their hearts. If you stay unconverted, you essentially don’t understand the message simply because you do not have the means to. The disciples had, by then, listened to Jesus preach countless times and still, they didn’t understand Him.



None of the disciples ever properly understood Jesus' message (Image source: jesusfilm.org)

The apostle Mark confirmed the same thing. In fact, it was said that they “were afraid to ask Him what He meant”:

“³⁰ Leaving that region, they travelled through Galilee. Jesus didn’t want anyone to know He was there, ³¹ for He wanted to spend more time with His disciples and teach them. He said to them, ‘The Son of Man is going to be betrayed into the hands of His enemies. He will be killed, but three days later, He will rise from the dead.’ ³² They didn’t understand what He was saying, however, and they were afraid to ask Him what He meant.” (Mk 9:30-32, NLT, m.e.)

The apostle Matthew put it a little differently:

“²² After they gathered again in Galilee, Jesus told them, ‘The Son of Man is going to be betrayed into the hands of His enemies. ²³ He will be killed, but on the third day, He will be raised from the dead.’ And the disciples were filled with grief.” (Mt 17:22-23, NLT, m.e.)

Amazingly, they were “filled with grief.” That was the disciples’ reaction to what they heard. Similarly so, many people would feel the same at every Good Friday when they hear the message of how Jesus was killed. Sadness would cast a pall over those who listen to the story of Good Friday. But being sad doesn’t mean the person is converted. The two things are mutually exclusive.

Even more amazing was that Jesus had clearly preached the Gospel to His disciples earlier. Matthew recorded this event:

“¹⁷ As Jesus was going up to Jerusalem, he took the twelve disciples aside privately and told them what was going to happen to him. ¹⁸ ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘we’re going up to Jerusalem, where the Son of Man will be betrayed to the leading priests and the teachers of religious law. They will sentence Him to die. ¹⁹ Then they will hand Him over to the Romans to be mocked, flogged with a whip, and crucified. But on the third day He will be raised from the dead.’” (Mt 20:17-19, NLT)

It couldn’t have gotten any more straightforward than this. Jesus’ words were as clear as bell and yet His disciples were incapable of understanding. As unconverted as they were, Judas went even further and betrayed Jesus before he left the room. Simon Peter went to the extent of rebuking the Lord. Six chapters later, we learn that, “all the disciples deserted Him and fled” (Mt 26:56).

The point is that if the disciples had fully understood what it was that Jesus said to them, Judas would probably not go through what he did and Simon Peter wouldn’t have gone as far as to chide the Lord. And the rest of the disciples wouldn’t have run for their lives. None of this would have occurred had all of Jesus’ disciples were converted:

“² Jesus called a little child to Him and put the child among them. ³ Then He said, “I tell you the truth, unless you turn from your sins and become like little children, you will never get into the Kingdom of Heaven.” (Mt 18:2-3, NLT, m.e.)

To be converted is to “turn from your sins.” In translations like the KJV, the phrase is more to the point: “Except ye be converted” with the emphasis on the word ‘converted.’

All of this suggest that if Jesus’ disciples had such difficulties in understanding His Gospel message mainly because they were all blind to its significance, then it goes to reason that Satan himself, who blinded them in the first place, couldn’t also have understood it too. Like the others, he was certainly unconverted. He had no capacity to come to grips with the Gospel message.

But here’s where I believe we can join some dots – the concealment of the significance of the message (Lk 18:34, 2 Cor 4:3-4) was made deliberate not only that the disciples don’t understand but that Satan couldn’t intercept it. Paul said that, “Satan … has blinded the minds of those who don’t believe” (2 Cor 4:4) but he was, without a doubt, also one of those “people who are perishing” (v.3). In other words, Jesus intentionally veiled the Gospel so that it wouldn’t be exposed to the devil.

That was also why Judas proceeded with the betrayal – he simply didn’t understand the purpose of Jesus’ plan. He knew nothing about His message and he didn’t make the effort to find out what it was. If he truly understood the message, he wouldn’t have betrayed Christ. He certainly would have realised His innocence (Mt 27:4).



Judas commits suicide (Image source: Quora)

As Scripture tells us, when Judas became aware of his mistake, he not only flung the silver coins on to the Temple floor but he went on to hang himself (v.5). To put it simply, it was the inability to understand the message that brought about all these consequences. And this inability was itself the result of not being converted in the first place.

Ironic then that if was only after Jesus’ resurrection that “the significance of His words” were no longer hidden from them. Instead His purpose became clear:

“Then He opened their minds to understand the Scriptures. ⁴⁶ And He said, “Yes, it was written long ago that the Messiah would suffer and die and rise from the dead on the third day. ⁴⁷ It was also written that this message would be proclaimed in the authority of His name to all the nations, beginning in Jerusalem: ‘There is forgiveness of sins for all who repent.’” (Lk 24:45-47, NLT, m.e.)

The above passage crystallises Jesus’ notion of the Suffering Servant that even His disciples didn’t understand. But of course, by the time they understood what it meant, the Son of God had died on the Cross and risen. In the same way, Satan too failed to understand. He too couldn’t do anything about it. It was simply too little too late for him to undermine the Messiah’s plan.

By then, it was clear to Satan that manipulating Judas to do his dirty deed was a big mistake. As victorious as it might have seem at the beginning, it was the worst thing he could ever have done because dying on the Cross opened the way for humanity to be redeemed. The Son of God defeated death and in doing so, the promise of salvation was now forever open to all who chose to believe.

Without the truth of the Holy Spirit in him, Satan looked positively gullible:

“But people who aren’t spiritual can’t receive these truths from God’s Spirit. It all sounds foolish to them and they can’t understand it, for only those who are spiritual can understand what the Spirit means.” (1 Cor 2:14, NLT, m.e.)

The epitome of Satan’s foolishness are the super-intelligent of the secular world. Those who are supremely knowledgeable and intellectually astute fall into this category in the same way as those who thrive on redoubtable nature of logic. These are people who find confidence, assurance and superiority in who they are. They purely thrive on their own personal ability to excel, depending on no one else, much less a Divine Authority.

Similarly foolish are those who have neither the attachment to nor the belief in the spiritual realm. They reject the existence of God and the devil. They do not believe in the reward of Heaven or the threat of Hell. Life is short but its meaning ceases after death. They believe in making the most of life but it’s hedonistic.

In the world we live in, many of these people may well be the world’s most creative designers, ingenious technologists, brilliant engineers, visionary corporate leaders, outstanding statements or famous entertainers and headlining celebrities and anyone whose stripes are earned in Hollywood. They can also be those who are anti-Christian including not just atheists but essentially also socialists, communists, fascists and all forms of radical political extremists.

Without the Holy Spirit in them, they are merely fools with no means to understand Jesus’ message. They lack the discernment to tell the moral difference between good and bad, right and wrong. They are nothing but useful fodder to Satan. What these people don’t understand is useful fodder eventually becomes garbage once the prince of the air has no more use for it.

Satan himself is, beyond any shadow of doubt, a very intelligent being. He shares that self-important preoccupation with the materialistic values projected by the world we live in. Beyond his nose, he cares for no one else but himself. His selfishness means he is obsessed with power and control, centring his focus on destroying God even if that means using people who ultimately mean nothing to him.

These are not the people who will ever understand Christ’s message. It looks like even if the message were not concealed, they still wouldn’t perceive its significance. That is because they do not have the humbleness of heart to properly comprehend.

“At that time Jesus prayed this prayer: ‘O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, thank You for hiding these things from those who think themselves wise and clever, and for revealing them to the childlike.’” (Mt 11:25, NLT)

And this is where we’re all at – when we think so highly of our own abilities and knowledge, we actually end up all the more foolish because the truth of God’s word is unavailable to us. Satan was too confident about the things he knew but he cared nothing about the things he didn’t know. And that did not prepare himself to understand the significance of Jesus’ message. Invariably he had set himself up for the fall and he had no one else to blame but his own self.

But it wasn’t just his intelligence that got in the way. Satan’s limits prevented him from being omnipresent as well. Unlike God who can be in multiple places at any one time, the devil couldn’t:

“‘³⁰ I don’t have much more time to talk to you, because the ruler of this world approaches.’” (Jn 14:30, NLT, m.e.)

The context of the above passage was Jesus’ talking to His disciples, sharing the many things He wanted for them to know. The ‘problem’ was that His time was dictated by Satan’s proximity. In saying that, “the ruler of this world approaches,” Jesus was alluding to Satan not having the ability to be in different places at the same time. His approaching quite possibly suggests that the devil was nearing Him and His disciples, having come from somewhere else. In other words, Satan couldn’t possibly be omnipresent.

It also means that he had no knowledge of Jesus’ plans and what He shared with His disciples up to that point. Had Satan been omnipresent, it would’ve been a cinch for him to eavesdrop.

No concept of love

Loveless and a liar (Image source: livingword-of-god.blogspot.com)

Here’s something we all know: Satan has no love. He doesn’t understand love. He has no appreciate for love. He probably doesn’t care if no one loves him because he requires no love to survive. But here’s the problem for him – because there is no love in him, he also doesn’t have the ability to understand what motivates God to do the things He does. He certainly won’t be able to figure out why He would go the extra mile to save us from damnation.

Therefore when Jesus died on the Cross, there was no way for Satan to understand why He would do something like that. Of course, Satan has seen how despicable man can be. Over the thousands of years of world history, Satan himself has travelled the four corners of the world and witnessed the evil in man. He knew them to be worthless but he also knew enough to exploit their weaknesses to advance his motives.

But what he cannot understand is why God would want to save man when man has nothing but evil in his heart. In other words, he can’t wrap his mind around God’s love for humans including even those who have proven to be wretched and hopeless sinners.

To Satan, if ever the word ‘love’ is applicable, it is in the form of self-indulgence. Satan indulges purely in himself. He invests importance in only the things he wants to achieve. He pursues his own glory at the expense of everyone else. He has no interest in anything or anyone including God. However, his mistake is he thinks everyone is like him. And he also assumes that because man is a sinner, he is, like him, incapable of love.

All this leads to Satan’s inability to consider that the Son of God would glorify Himself by being nailed naked and bloodied on the Cross (Jn 17:1). In fact, all of what Jesus did during His time on Earth must have been inconceivable to him. Nothing the Lord did was palatable in his sight.

Given that he has no concept of love, Satan would not be able to emulate Christ in the way He redeemed us. He certainly wouldn’t contemplate helping us in whatsoever manner. If he is ever seen doing so, it would be a pure deception. Because of his lack of love, Satan didn’t see it coming that Jesus would die on the Cross and rise again just to save us. All he could see was that we were all not worth the fuss, whatever that fuss even meant. C.S. Lewis’ demon character Screwtape and his letter to a fellow demon is worth reading given this context about Satan (HarperOne, 2009, pp.99-101).

Convinced that everyone was like him, Satan probably believed that God was also loveless. That was where all his lies and deceptions came from. He tells as many of us as he can that the Lord was nothing more than a despotic tyrant who doubles up as a control freak, bent on self-glory and demanding that everyone bowed to worship Him. That was because he himself was exactly that. In his deceptive depiction of a loveless God, what Satan is doing is to project his very own image of an unloved, selfish and ruthless being.

None of this would have been of much concern if not for the Cross. The importance of the Cross helps us to understand the significance of what Satan wanted to do. Unquestionably, Satan detests God. He hates the fact that God loves because he doesn’t. He despises God for the abundant love He has in Him. He could never understand how or why He would allow His Son to die on the Cross. But then one doubts if he himself understood why he led Him to the Cross only to realise that in the end, it was stunningly self-defeating.

All the accusations Satan levelled against God ended up pointing back at him. He said God was hateful but he was. He said God was despotic and tyrannical but instead, he was. He said God was a control freak but in the end, he was the one who wanted to deprive man of his freedom. Everything he accused God of backfired because they were the very accusations that described him to the very tee.

Satan’s failure to connect love and sacrifice prevented him from coming to terms with the nature of our relationship with God. He could never reconcile with the idea that Christ would and did die for us even though we were unworthy of such love and sacrifice. And because of this inability, he would always be out of sync with everything God meant to us and everything we meant to Him.

Satan’s accusations vanish

Misguided churches are vulnerable to Satan (Image source: The Daily Beast)

By this point in this article, we know that Satan’s accusations are as pointless as they are toothless. Deprived of his power by the Cross of Christ, God not only exposed his lies but He also proved that everything He was accused of were in effect, Satan’s very character. It is for this reason that Jesus said this of him on the night prior to His crucifixion:

“³¹ The time for judging this world has come, when Satan, the ruler of this world, will be cast out. ³² And when I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw everyone to Myself.” ³³ He said this to indicate how He was going to die.” (Jn 12:31-33, NLT, m.e.)

The Cross of Christ represents everything that Satan didn’t understand. That is why he just couldn’t wrap his head around. Finding himself in a quandary, he did the very thing he shouldn’t have done but if he didn’t do the very thing he did, he still wouldn’t know if he did the right thing. And at the fundamental core of it, it’s Satan’s rejection of God’s love that caused him not to be able to foresee why Jesus had to die on the Cross:

“He cancelled the record of the charges against us and took it away by nailing it to the Cross. ¹⁵ In this way, He disarmed the spiritual rulers and authorities. He shamed them publicly by His victory over them on the Cross.” (Col 2:14-15, NLT, m.e.)  

If Satan’s accusations of God were even a fraction true, the above passage wouldn’t make one iota of sense. There is no evidence of selfishness here; instead, we witness a God who loves us enough to be willing to forgive us of our sins. We also read of a God who has not forgotten, even over the ages, of Satan’s treachery.

Of even greater importance is that for thousands of years, God’s promise had not changed. He still delivers and He still loves us unreservedly. No one has the degree of patience and sacrifice that God has. This doesn’t mean He will suffer fools gladly though. What it means is that with His longstanding promise, God has never forgotten us

Check out what Paul writes in this regard:

“¹³ For He has rescued us from the kingdom of darkness and transferred us into the Kingdom of His dear Son, ¹⁴ who purchased our freedom and forgave our sins.” (Col 1:13-14, NLT, m.e.)

That is why Satan’s accusations not just don’t make sense but they also have no power over us. As Paul says above that Jesus came to Earth to make certain that we are delivered from darkness into Christ’s Kingdom and that it is Him who paid our ransom and wiped our dirty slates clean.

In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus reveals His plan to get the apostle Paul to deliver the Gentiles from darkness and into the light; from Satan’s stranglehold to His Kingdom where their sins are forgiven and a place among God’s people is given to them. There is no doubt whatsoever that only the One who loves can do all these. None of Satan’s accusations can ever be levelled at Him whose love is boundless:

“Yes, I am sending you to the Gentiles ¹⁸ to open their eyes, so they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God. Then they will receive forgiveness for their sins and be given a place among God’s people, who are set apart by faith in Me.’” (Acts 26:17b-18, NLT)

Over in the Book of Hebrews, Paul explains Jesus’ reason to die on the Cross and by His sacrifice, He was able to overcome Satan’s grip over our lives. And only through Christ can all of this be done in love and sacrifice. Jesus, by being human and dying on the Cross, did the one thing that no one else could do. He liberated us from a life doomed in bondage to the devil:

“For only as a human being could He die, and only by dying could He break the power of the devil, who had the power of death. ¹⁵ Only in this way could He set free all who have lived their lives as slaves to the fear of dying.” (Heb 2:14b-15, NLT)

There is nothing in the above passage that gives us the impression that God is selfish or conceited. To believe in Satan’s accusations is to entirely miss the opportunity for the Lord to show us His lovingkindness, generosity and trust. And if we miss all of what He has to offer, we will never be repatriated to Him to whom we belong. And because of the Cross of Christ, Satan’s dominion over us through the fear of death is forever gone.

The trouble God went to

If lightning is frightening, imagine God's omnipotence (Image source: Bible Study Tools)

Let’s not kid ourselves – at any time, God could destroy Satan be it thousands of years ago or right now. With His omnipotence, God’s power is far too much for anyone to withstand, including the devil himself. Indeed, there is nothing He can’t do to neutralise or completely obliterate whoever stands in His way. As the psalmist reveals, there is nothing that can stop the Lord in whatever He seeks out to accomplish:

“Who in all of heaven can compare with the Lord? What mightiest angel is anything like the Lord? ⁷ The highest angelic powers stand in awe of God. He is far more awesome than all who surround His throne. ⁸ O Lord God of Heaven’s Armies! Where is there anyone as mighty as you, O Lord?” (Ps 89:6-8, NLT, m.e.)

It’s inarguable that Satan is no match for God and the reason why he’s still around is because He allows him to. The devil and his hordes of demons do whatever they do because He has not decided to annihilate them. Yet. But in good time, prophecies tell us that it will happen. Until then, the Lord will choose to repudiate all his spurious claims.

What this means is that God is waiting to destroy Satan but that will have to wait. His priority is to deny him now, which in so many ways is an affirmation that the devil’s lies need to be seriously dealt with. That’s another way of saying that Satan’s lies and deceptions are very destructive though that should not come as a surprise.

Many have often said that the world today is preoccupied with fakery. It’s all around us. It affects virtually all pillars and walks of life. There’s plenty of fake news and information. There’re also fake people living fake lives. There’re even fake products. Even online product reviews and customer feedbacks can be fake. It’s become such a norm that it’s difficult to tell truth from lies anymore.


Satan promotes fake lives (Image source: Iamthewordthecomforter.blogspot.com)

A less kind word to describe fakery is lies. Fake news and information aim to deceive people often for political gains. The left-wing mainstream media is a good example of this. Fake people leading fake lives do so often out of a sense of insecurity, wanting someone else’s identity because they hate theirs. 

Living a life of lies hurts everyone including themselves. Some people are motivated to produce fake products by stealing copyrighted designs and ideas. Some go even further where their fake products produce deadly results such as the case with counterfeit formula milk and eggs.

These are all happening throughout the world. Lies offer us a world full of false impressions that lead us astray. In some cases, they lead us to sin. Living in a world filled with lies means we will never know the truth. That means not having a real idea of what is happening as well as what is truly said.

The most famous lie ever told was a very deadly one because all of us till today is still paying the price for it. It begins in the Book of Genesis:

“The serpent was the shrewdest of all the wild animals the Lord God had made. One day he asked the woman, ‘Did God really say you must not eat the fruit from any of the trees in the garden?’ ² ‘Of course we may eat fruit from the trees in the garden,’ the woman replied. ³ ‘It’s only the fruit from the tree in the middle of the garden that we are not allowed to eat. God said, ‘You must not eat it or even touch it; if you do, you will die.’’ ⁴ ‘You won’t die!’ the serpent replied to the woman. ⁵ ‘God knows that your eyes will be opened as soon as you eat it, and you will be like God, knowing both good and evil.’” (Gen 3:1-5, NLT, m.e.)

In this renowned story, Satan was in full flight. Seeing that God had left Adam and Eve on their own in the Garden of Eden, he moved in for the kill. Being innocent meant they were simply at the mercy of the one prepossessed with a desperation to destroy lives.

As the passage tells us, Eve was bought lock, stock and barrel by the father of lies who took advantage of her innocence. And he did that by lying. The way Satan lied was to undermine God’s reputation. He basically ‘corrected’ Eve’s understanding of what the Lord said to her, replacing her version with his. Although Scripture doesn’t say, it is possible that Satan knew he could get away with his lies because Adam and Eve were like fresh pickings for him.

Not having been exposed to a treacherous liar like Satan meant neither Adam nor Eve were ever in the position to be able to expose him. Furthermore, without God being around, Satan was having a field day as he plied one lie after another for as long as he could so long as he was getting the results he wanted. The result was tragic – Adam and Eve both fell for his lies and life was never the same from that point onwards. Having betrayed God, both were forever evicted from the Garden of Eden.

Throughout Scripture, Satan’s success rate threatened, on many occasions, to derail the covenantal line of David. Many characters fell to the wayside because of his lies. Even though God was always able to stay ahead and defeat him, Satan’s lies meant that many along the way paid a hefty price. And it gets more complicated.

If Christ had chosen to come not as a Suffering Servant but as a Conquering King instead, Satan himself might actually have benefited even more so. As a Conquering King, God would have been significantly militaristic in his view to overcome the enemy. That would’ve meant killing every Roman soldier and officer of the army throughout the land but that wouldn’t be all. 

Quite likely, He would eliminate the Jewish religious leaders of the Sanhedrin as well. And if his thirst for vengeance continued unabatedly, He might even flatten the entire Roman Empire. And while He was at it, there would be no stopping Him putting Satan out of his misery.

Think for a moment what the reaction would be if God did do all of the above. Imagine the uproar and the scathing criticisms. While some quarters of the Jewish community would have enjoyed watching God destroying their enemy, not everyone would be on the same page. Many would likely view God’s actions unfavourably. And this would be because Satan had long sold the Lord short by way of false criticisms and unfounded allegations, not to mention accusations that had no basis whatsoever.



Behold the Hands of the Suffering Servant (Image source: Youtube)

If God came to conquer militarily, Satan would relish the very idea that finally he could prove that the Lord was selfish, obsessed, unforgiving and incapable of loving. In short, he would be correct in his view that He was nothing more than a selfish, conceited and arrogant Creator of the Universe.

The God we learn about in Scripture is certainly not the one with the Conquering King complex but if He were one, He would be the type who solved problems through the barrel of His howitzer. None of us would get second chances. One transgression and He’d blow our heads off. He won’t tolerate anyone who questions Him. He certainly wouldn’t bother to respond.

At the same time, a Conquering King would end up proving to us that Scripture is errant because many if not all of the prophecies will be unfulfilled. The whole idea of jettisoning the notion of the Suffering Servant will be the proverbial train wreck in every Christian’s faith. That might be what Satan would like to see but that’s not God’s way.

God is certainly sovereign, meaning He can decide to do anything He wishes and it will be His right. Anywhere within the wide expanse of the Universe, God reigns supreme bar none. He is righteous and in His perfected grace, He does whatever pleases Him. Therefore if God behaves in the way Satan accuses Him of, then His character will be suspect. Satan’s lies will be vindicated. God’s integrity will be tarnished. Again, that’s not how God works.

The authors of ‘God’s Strategy in Human History’ (Wipf & Stock, 2001) wrote:

“We may indeed accept that He had the sheer power to stop or even destroy Satan. The problem is that in this case, even as Satan sank under God’s wrath and destruction, he would have gone with a sneer on his lips as though to say, ‘I told you so.’”

If Satan get things done his way, he’d want to prove to the world that he didn’t lie at all. And if his lies stick, that means he will die a martyr. The world will be able to justify its heinous behaviour and worship him. Hollywood would celebrate and so will every evil, debauched and anti-God person throughout the world who have felt hamstrung because of God’s moral righteousness.

The authors continue:

“It was not lack of power that prevented God from crushing Satan – it was a matter of principle [my emphasis]. It is, perhaps, comparable to the moral restraint that makes it impossible for God to lie. Satan’s accusations must be answered and they cannot be truly answered by a force that simple crushes the accuser.”

And so God chooses to be patient with Satan. Rather than to spontaneously combust him, He stuck to His plan to deny him the pleasure of fulfilling his accusations.

Unfurling the mystery

Image source: pottypadre.com

It probably stemmed from a common Judaist misassumption that the Messiah would come as a Conquering King. That vision of a powerful military knight in shining armour is the complete anathema to the idea of the Suffering Servant. To the Jews who themselves were suffering at the hands of the Romans, Jesus as the Suffering Servant was hard to swallow. Even His disciples were struggling to cope with such an idea.

The occupation of the Romans was more than enough to rile the Jews into armed action. We know that the Sicraii (סיקריים siqari’im), a radical splinter militia group from the Jewish Zealots were involved in knifing its enemies (including sympathisers) in crowded areas around Jerusalem. In fact, the disciple-cum-betrayer Judas’ surname, Iscariot, is quite possibly a corruption of the Latin ‘sicarius’ (tr. murderer, assassin or dagger man), which itself indicates his family origins were linked to the Sicarii.

The Sicarii weren’t, of course, the only ones within the Jewish community to wish to see the backs of the Romans. Very likely, there were others. But it wasn’t just the Romans who were terrorising the Jews. Bearing the brunt of legalistic religiosity had also added to the burden of the Jews. Hence Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount (Mt 5-7) was like a breath of fresh air to them. The Sanhedrin had made Judaism so impossible to practise that people were suffering as if they were oppressed.

Given the oppressive atmosphere that the Jews had found themselves in, a Conquering King would be most welcome. Scripture told them of the Messiah that was to come but they failed to translate the idea of the Suffering King although it was reasonably well spelled out in the Book of Isaiah. In some ways, every Jew was probably dreaming of a Conquering King because they were bereft of ideas beyond their comprehension.

Listen to what the demons even had to say in their possession of two men when Jesus met them in Gadarenes. They were screaming at Him:

“Why are you interfering with us, Son of God? Have you come here to torture us before God’s appointed time?” (Mt 8:29, NLT, m.e.)

The implication is simple – the demons didn’t think anything about Jesus coming to torment Himself. The Cross meant nothing to them. Instead they thought He was there to torture them and in that sense, Jesus had given them the impression that He came to conquer evil in the stereotypical vanquishing manner.

Even the demons had no understanding of God’s plan, what more the ordinary people. Before Jesus came, no one knew of God’s mystery plan, including Satan. Even after He came and in His ministry days, people still didn’t understand His plan. It was so inconceivable that they just couldn’t see the real reason behind His dying on the Cross. In other words, had Satan knew what the crucifixion meant, he would’ve done things completely differently. He certainly wouldn’t be so quick at sending Him to die.

Here’s what Paul has to say about the mystery:

“Yet when I am among mature believers, I do speak with words of wisdom but not the kind of wisdom that belongs to this world or to the rulers of this world who are soon forgotten. ⁷ No, the wisdom we speak of is the mystery of God – His plan that was previously hidden, even though He made it for our ultimate glory before the world began. ⁸ But the rulers of this world have not understood it; if they had, they would not have crucified our glorious Lord.” (1 Cor 2:6-8, NLT, m.e.)

Some scholars believe that the “rulers of this world” in the above passage pertain to those in the time of Jesus including Pilate, Caiaphas, Herod and the Sanhedrin itself. They are, of course, instrumental in driving Christ to the Cross more so than anyone else. But in Paul’s other letters to the churches in Corinth and Ephesus, it mightn’t look that way:

“³ If the Good News we preach is hidden behind a veil, it is hidden only from people who are perishing. ⁴ Satan, who is the god of this world, has blinded the minds of those who don’t believe. They are unable to see the glorious light of the Good News. They don’t understand this message about the glory of Christ, who is the exact likeness of God.” (2 Cor 4:3-4, NLT, m.e.)

“¹² For we are not fighting against flesh-and-blood enemies, but against evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, against mighty powers in this dark world, and against evil spirits in the heavenly places.” (Eph 6:12, NLT, m.e.)

In the first passage, Paul wrote to the Corinthians, identifying Satan as the “god of this world.” But to the Ephesians, he wrote about “evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world” as well as “mighty powers in this dark world” and also “evil spirits in the heavenly places.”

Here are three clear references and they certainly don’t refer to “flesh-and-blood enemies.” Without a doubt, these references point to demons of the dark spiritual realm who have been deceived by the Cross of Christ. Since they didn’t have even the foggiest idea about God’s mystery plan, they were comprehensively trounced. Their desire to destroy Jesus backfired spectacularly and of course, every Good Friday and Easter Sunday, we remember this very well.

Cloaked from publicity, Satan simply had no means to prevent God from revealing the mystery plan to those who possess the Spirit to know and understand. In Paul’s case, the mystery was the message of salvation to which God had commanded him to reveal it to every Gentile he met in his missionary work “so that they too might believe and obey Him” (Rom 16:26, NLT):

“God has given me the responsibility of serving His church by proclaiming His entire message to you. ²⁶ This message was kept secret for centuries and generations past but now it has been revealed to God’s people. ²⁷ For God wanted them to know that the riches and glory of Christ are for you Gentiles too. And this is the secret: Christ lives in you. This gives you assurance of sharing His glory.” (Col 1:25-27, NLT)

In his letter to the Colossians, Paul finally revealed what the mystery was. Had Satan understood what this was, he wouldn’t have been pleased because it bears a direct reference to God’s idea of salvation through His Son who died on the Cross and was then resurrected.



The Good News is the mysterious plan (Image source: ekronbaptistchurch.com)

In another letter – this one written to the Ephesians – Paul is even more descriptive about the mystery:

“As I briefly wrote earlier, God Himself revealed His mysterious plan to me. ⁴ As you read what I have written, you will understand my insight into this plan regarding Christ. ⁵ God did not reveal it to previous generations but now by His Spirit, He has revealed it to His holy apostles and prophets. ⁶ And this is God’s plan: Both Gentiles and Jews who believe the Good News share equally in the riches inherited by God’s children. Both are part of the same body and both enjoy the promise of blessings because they belong to Christ Jesus.” (Eph 3:3-6, NLT, m.e.)

Unlike the one to the Colossians, Paul’s description to the Ephesians was clearer about the involvement of the Gentiles. By that inclusion, both the Gentiles and the Jews “share equally in the riches” and that “both are part of the same body.” Hence, “both enjoy the promise of blessings because they belong to Christ.” And that “Christ lives in you” (Col 1:27, NLT).

Satan might be frustrated to realise that, according to Paul, the mysterious plan might not, after all, be all that hidden away. While the “previous generations” were not privy to the mystery, the “holy apostles and prophets” were.

Continuing from his letter to the Ephesians, Paul wrote more about this plan:

“By God’s grace and mighty power, I have been given the privilege of serving Him by spreading this Good News. Though I am the least deserving of all God’s people, He graciously gave me the privilege of telling the Gentiles about the endless treasures available to them in Christ. ⁹ I was chosen to explain to everyone this mysterious plan that God, the Creator of all things, had kept secret from the beginning. ¹⁰ God’s purpose in all this was to use the church to display His wisdom in its rich variety to all the unseen rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. ¹¹ This was His eternal plan, which He carried out through Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Eph 3:7-11, NLT, m.e.)

Interestingly, Paul now says that despite its mysteriousness, the plan was available albeit to those who were “in Christ.” That plainly means that it was hidden in God Himself. Ultimately, therefore, no one really knew about it and that included the angels. And if that is the case, there is absolutely no way that Satan could’ve come to know about it. And if you look more closely at verse 10, Paul says:

“God’s purpose in all this was to use the church to display His wisdom in its rich variety to all the unseen rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.” (v.10, NLT, m.e.)

With the plan made so mysteriously, God intended to utilise His church to make known to the “unseen rulers and authorities in the heavenly places” His character.

But what is this character of God that Paul alludes to? It is “His wisdom” that God has decided to show Satan.

In His wisdom, God, this time, finally revealed to the public the whole truth behind the idea:

“For God presented Jesus as the sacrifice for sin. People are made right with God when they believe that Jesus sacrificed His life, shedding His blood. This sacrifice shows that God was being fair when He held back and did not punish those who sinned in times past…” (Rom 3:25, NLT, m.e.)

And with that, the whole plan is known to every man, including all the angels in the heavenly realm. And that includes Satan and his demons. And because none were wiser about this mystery, the angels themselves are now “eagerly watching these things happen” (1 Pt 1:12, NLT). In fact, they are attentive to all that take place on Earth (Lk 15:10, 1 Cor 4:9, Eph 3:10, 1 Tim 5:21).

Imagine for a moment how the angels were watching the tragedy of Jesus’ death on the Cross. Picture how they must have been very perplexed as to why the Son of God had to be killed. It’s not difficult to question why He couldn’t, wouldn’t and didn’t defend Himself. And with these questions, any angel would know of Christ’s divine powers.

As the Son of God, He didn’t need to go through the gruesome death. He could have executed the salvation in a different way. And of course, He could have just vanquished Satan and subject him and his demons to a miserable death. In other words, it must have been very difficult, not to mention cruel and hard to compel the angels to watch Christ die on the Cross without understanding the mystery that was behind this plan.

And then, imagine when the angels finally understood the Father’s salvation plan encompassed not only the Jews but also the Gentiles. It would’ve been awesome that the angels realised God’s incredible nature was beyond even their understanding.

Ultimately, the mystery plan unfolds a salvation that underscores the unprecedented power of Christ’s sacrifice. It also bears perfect evidence to God’s brand of love; something beyond even our comprehension and certainly something Satan can never understand nor appreciate.

Where Satan’s head is at

The fast decaying morality in the world (Image source: medium.com)

Now that we understand how God’s great plan was kept a mystery from everyone, one begs to ask the question what Satan was thinking as he watched Jesus nailed to the Cross and left to die. 

Could he be gloating, happy to see his great adversary finally ‘defeated’? Or could he possibly realise, to his horror, how wrong he was to have set Christ up for the Cross?

Whether you think he was happy or otherwise is finally immaterial. As Scripture reveals, Satan, even in understanding the full extent of the power of the Cross of Christ, he wasn’t the least bit deterred. Merely, it spurred him to wreak more havoc in our lives as we can see in the last century. In fact, we do have evidence that rather than depressed, he was quite the opposite:

“Therefore, rejoice, O heavens! And you who live in the heavens, rejoice! But terror will come on the earth and the sea, for the devil had come down to you in great anger, knowing that he has little time.” (Rev 12:12, NLT, m.e.)

Furious might be an even better word. And importantly, Satan is now pressed for time. This means he will go all out and terrorise all of us and he will do that as quickly and intensely as he can. And in the process, he will not be taking any prisoners along. It’s destroy, destroy and destroy.

On October 27 2019, the ISIS leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, found himself cornered with nowhere safe to go by a surprise raid carried out by the U.S. Special Ops at his home in northern Syria. Clearly defeated and with not a hope left to escape, al-Baghdadi snatched three of his young children with him and raced down a tunnel hotly pursued by canine units belonging to the Americans.

Once he reached the dead end of the tunnel, he detonated his suicide vest, killing not just him but three innocent children. It was one thing for the world’s most wanted terrorist to die under such miserable circumstances but in his desperation and recklessness, al-Baghdadi did the unthinkable with three children who didn’t deserve to be blown up.

After the Second World War’s D-Day, a defeated Hitler realised that he was doomed. But instead of coming to terms with the harsh reality, he resorted to committing even greater terror. Like al-Baghdadi, he wasn’t going to go quietly. Digging in deeper, he exhorted his remaining forces to fight even more brutally. Even in the throes of losing the war, Hitler took to executing POWs in Valkyrie including pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer. 

The point is Satan realises that humanity has been saved from the brink by Christ’s death and resurrection. Yet he can justify continuing to wage war. His hatred for God must be so intense that he will not go down without fighting even if all his battles are a lost cause. That explains why as we enter the End Times, Satan is very hard at work, looking still to destroy God or at least discredit Him.

Look at how he has managed to steer so many millions of people away from God. Churches are not exactly growing, at least not in the Western world. Many are either downsizing or they have shuttered. Woman are told lies that drive them away from God and into Satan’s bosom where they are made to feel that preserving their lifestyles is more important than preserving the lives of their unborn children.

Satan has clocked up some startling milestones by confusing the youths and their understanding of gender. Because God has been driven away from many of their lives, they have no understanding about Adam, Eve and the call to procreate. As a result, we now struggle to cope with the LBGTQ movement not just in society but within the grounds of our very own churches.

By spurning God, Satan has convinced millions to dispense with the morality code. By doing so, people are so messed up that they don’t know right from wrong anymore. Today, governments are encouraging illegal immigrants to breach their own borders where they then commit heinous crimes and get away with them. Yet they continue to protect them from the very laws that they are supposed to uphold to protect their own citizens.



Image source: South China Morning Post

With 8 in 10 Malaysians spending as much as 8 hours 5 minutes a day on social media alone, Satan does appear to be weaning people off reality and into a world of subtle self-destruction. Imagine there really are people who because of social media, are in depression. Many even have committed suicide.

Satan has been driving people mad with all the wrong and misguided ambitions just so he can defy God. From climate change (formerly called ‘global warming’) to the all-electric car and going to Mars on a one-way ticket, man has essentially made a fool of themselves. Worse, none of these even made sense when you dig right down to the truth.

If he cannot defeat God directly, Satan plans to destroy or sever our relationships with Him. None of the above activities will ever draw us near to the Lord. And it isn’t just these two instances either; the devil has an endless array of convoluted ways to get us to ignore Him and ultimately leave Him. He has at his disposal countless material objects and people who will do his bidding. Satan can get our close friends to undermine our relationship with God, in the same way as he uses flashy lifestyles to uproot our faith in Christ.

Make no bones about it – Satan will relentlessly pursue us wherever we are and tell us the kind of lies he once told Eve in the Garden of Eden. Being the “father of lies,” lying has always been something he excels in. So he doesn’t have problems doing this all day long. And for sure, this has been his most prolific activity since time immemorial. It goes without saying that deception is his choice weapon in breaking apart our relationships with God.

But it doesn’t matter. Satan is running down the clock and no matter how much damage he thinks he can inflict, God remains in exclusive control over everything. The fact that the Lord has chosen to wait for the best moment to finally punish him means He can be as patient and persevering as He is kind, loving and forgiving. The point is God chooses His timing to teach Satan a lesson and in doing so, he does make use of his time to bring havoc to our lives though we shouldn’t look at things that way.

As for Satan, he has and will continue to try everything he can think of to destroy our lives and serve his notice of intent. But as history proves that in defeat, he is a poor learner.

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May, Owen (n.d.) The Nativity – No Room at the Inn? (Bible Reflections) accessible at http://www.bible-reflections.net/articles/the-nativity-no-room-at-the-inn/5890/   

McCallum, Dennis (Jun 2009) Satan and His Kingdom: What the Bible Says and How It Matters to You (Minneapolis, MN: Bethany House) available at https://www.amazon.com/Satan-His-Kingdom-Bible-Matters/dp/0764206494

Schreiber, Mordecai (Jun 2007) The Shengold Jewish Encyclopaedia, Golden Anniversary Edition (Rockville, MA: Schreiber Publishing) available at https://www.amazon.com/Shengold-Jewish-Encyclopedia-Mordecai-Schreiber/dp/0884003280  

Swindoll, Chuck R. (Dec 2008) Great Lives: Elijah: A Man of Heroism and Humility (Nashville, TN: Word Publishing) available at https://www.amazon.com/Elijah-Heroism-Humility-Great-Lives/dp/140028032X/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=  

Telushkin, Rabbi Joseph (Jun 2008) Jewish Literacy Revised Ed: The Most Important Things to Know About the Jewish Religion, Its People and Its History (New York, NY: William Morrow) available at https://www.amazon.com/Jewish-Literacy-Revised-Ed-Important/dp/0061374989

Unilad (Oct 2016) Scientists Find ‘Proof’ That Moses Actually Parted the Red Sea (UNILAD) accessible at https://www.unilad.co.uk/science/scientists-find-proof-that-moses-did-part-the-red-sea/

Walton, John H. (Oct 2001) Genesis – NIV Application Commentary: From biblical text to contemporary life (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Academic) available at https://www.amazon.com/NIV-Application-Commentary-Genesis/dp/0310206170

Wright, David (Jul 2010) How Long were the Israelites in Egypt? (Answers in Genesis) accessible at https://answersingenesis.org/bible-questions/how-long-were-the-israelites-in-egypt/