Meditation for the week of May 11, 2008
Revelation 20:2-3
He laid hold of the dragon, that serpent of old, who is the Devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years; and he cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a seal on him, so that he should deceive the nations no more till the thousand years were finished. But after these things he must be released for a little while.
Why are human beings so violent? We kill one another with our armies. We have police forces because we aren’t safe in our cities. We have prisons filled with people who have committed violent crimes. Every day the newspaper is filled with stories of human suffering caused by the violent way humans treat one another. Satan is the reason that men behave in this irrational way.
Satan is a fallen angel who at one time had the highest place in heaven. He is out to destroy anything and everything that pleases God (Isaiah 14:12-14 and Ezekiel 28:13-15). He deceived Eve into believing that she would be happier and wiser if she disobeyed God. One of the results of this great deception was that Eve’s firstborn was a murderer. Satan tried to prove that Job only worshiped God because of the material blessings that God had provided Him. He tried to convince the Lord to rule the kingdoms of the world without going to the cross during the temptation in the wilderness. He has tried to convince men that Christ was an impostor and that He did not rise from the dead. He is evil, wicked, cunning, and an adversary to anything good. We are his children by nature (Ephesians 2:2-3) and he is a murderer (John 8:44). No wonder there is so much violence in the world.
Many of my friends wonder if there is a God because of all of the suffering and wickedness in this world. But the suffering that is intentionally caused by the wicked actions of men convinces me that Satan is real and that he influences the thinking and the affairs of men. How could there be an event like the destruction of the world trade center without his diabolical influence in this old world? Surely, God gets blamed for that which Satan has done. I realize that most people feel that if there is a God, he should stop Satan from doing what he does. Ultimately God will destroy Satan but right now, He is allowing Satan to test men to see if we will follow Satan or if we will follow God. When we follow Satan we fulfill his desire to have men who were created for the pleasure of God (Revelation 4:11) destroy one another.
Some people think that we are in the millennium and that the church represents the physical kingdom of God that is spoken of in the Bible. However, Satan will be bound during that 1000 years. When he is bound he won’t be able to do his work of deceiving men into killing each other. But since men are bent on killing one another, the millennium must yet be future. That means we live in the day when we must be born again so that we don’t think like Satan (John 3:7). After we are saved or born again we must resist him with the things that we believe (1 Peter 5:9). We need to submit to the Scriptures in order to do right and not do wrong.
The Lord says to love God and to love one another (Mark 12:30-31). Satan’s influence causes the world to hate and not to love. The only cure for Satan’s hate and deception is the real living Christ who wants to give us a new life. That life will cause us to love God and to love one another. Only the Gospel message can overcome the power of Satan and stem the violence that we see in our world.
Bruce Collins