The Shrewd Deceiver
APOCALYPTIC VISIONS
Satan’s overarching agenda is to wreck and ruin. There are suggestions in scripture that Satan rebelled against God. There is explicit mention of angelic rebellion in places like 2 Peter 2:4 and Jude 6 and while there is no express mention of Satan in those texts they open the door for the reasonableness of a satanic apostasy. We presume Satan was created by God and since God cannot create what is inherently (by creation) evil we presume that Satan made himself God’s enemy.
There’s no reason at all to think that Satan thinks he can dethrone God. In the movie Gladiator a Roman officer surveys the ranks of the enemy who are about to engage in a battle they cannot possibly win and wonders why they would not admit it. His general asks him, “Would we?” We continue to pursue lost causes for a variety of reasons and if you hate a man savagely enough you would be willing to bring the house down on yourself if you thought it would do him an injury. When it began to look as though World War II was going against him, Hitler made it very clear that whether the Nazi regime would win or lose that this would be true: “We shall not capitulate…no, never. We may be destroyed but if we are, we shall drag a world down with us…a world in flames…But even if we could not conquer them, we should drag half the world into destruction with us and leave no one to triumph over Germany. There will not be another 1918.”
The apocalyptic visions of Revelation show the Dragon, who is identified with the great Serpent and Satan (Rev. 12:9; 20:2, and see Rom. 16:20 with Gen. 3:14-15), at war with the Lamb and His armies. He seeks the destruction of the child born to be King and when thwarted in that he turns on the children of God (Rev. 12). And he makes it his business to deceive the nations so that they will worship the beast and the Dragon who gives power to the beast (Rev. 13) rather than God.
In his poetry, John Milton gives us a spellbinding description of Satan’s fanatical hatred and opposition to God. Early in Book I, though racked with deep despair Satan smolders in “immortal hate” and hisses to Beelzebub, his chief ally, that his mind is fixed and that he will never bow the knee to God or sue for grace. Beelzebub wants to know the point of continuing a battle they cannot win when all they would get is more defeat and Satan rebukes him for weakness and tells him:
Fallen Cherub, to be weak is miserable,
Doing or suffering: but of this be sure
To do aught good never will be our task,
But ever to do ill our sole delight,
As being contrary to His high will
Whom we resist. If then His providence
Out of our evil seek to bring forth good,
Our labor must be to pervert that end,
And out of good still to find means of evil.
He looks around at the desolation and gloom
that has now become his kingdom
and he insists that the farther from God he is the better.
And with a tone of finality he sets his awful course,
Farewell, happy fields,
Where joy forever dwells! Hail, horrors! hail,
Infernal World! And thou, profoundest Hell,
Receive thy new possessor – one who brings
A mind not to be changed by place or time.
The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a Heaven out of Hell, a Hell out of Heaven.
What matter where, if I be still the same…
Here at least we shall be free…
Here we may reign secure; and, in my choice,
To reign is worth ambition, though in Hell:
Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.
With this he goes off to build his capital, the great city Pandemonium, to which he gathers his despairing host of followers to “Consult how we may most offend.” Finding them whimpering and beaten he so rages that with words without substance he raises their courage and dispels their fears. Flags are raised, trumpets are blown and the vast host begins to shout in unison, and with swords and lances beating on their shields they frighten the Night as they swear eternal hatred against God and all he loves.
