Satan's Final Defeat

RV241-01

The End of the Millennium

Satan deceives these unregenerate millions in all nations into joining him in a final war against Jesus Christ. He promises to them, as he did, to Eve a better life if they will join him. Satan has thus not been rehabilitated by his imprisonment so as to repent of his hatred for God. The unbelievers born during the millennium have not been drawn to faith in Jesus Christ by his provision of a perfect government and a perfect world environment.

The reason for this is that the root of human evil is the nature in man. So, externals do not largely affect personal conduct. No matter how many government programs are invented to rehabilitate the criminal, they don't work. Everybody knows they don't work. And people who are rehabilitated by those systems come right back into the prison again. Why? Because they have not been internally changed in the human nature. That sin nature has not been brought under the control of the Spirit of God. So, we have a great demonstration here at the end of human history that the best of times produces the worst of people.

The call to mobilize for an attack against Jerusalem by Satan is an attack, of course, against the Jewish people once more. It is described as another Gog and Magog type of event, reminiscent of one that took place 1,000 years earlier at mid-tribulation, just as we refer to a World War I and World War II event. Centuries ago in heaven, Satan made his move against God while appealing to the angels to join him, and some did. At the end of the millennium, Satan makes his final move again against God, appealing to unregenerate mankind to join him. The goal again of this final world war is to destroy every Jew, and to replace God with Satan as the object of worship in the universe.

Now, this is for real. This is a preview of history. These are things that are going to happen. These are things that most Christians are oblivious to. These are things that have never been explained, and never been shown to them from Scripture. Consequently, they don't have this frame of reference for their lives. It is extremely important that you understand biblical prophecy. Man, without God and without doctrine, is a bust. When we live in a society, as we do today, where more and more, the people of this world system under Satan's domination are setting the priorities; the goals; the ideals; and, the moral standards, we can see, indeed, that there is no hope for human society until Christ returns.

This call of Satan to a final war against Jesus Christ is, in effect, a referendum by mankind on the world government, which has been administered by the Lord Jesus Christ for 1,000 years. So, we should understand that Satan appeals to people: "Come and join me, and I'll release you from this terrible oppression that is upon you, where you can't do wrong without being stopped. You can't be yourself. You can't do what comes naturally. We will give you that freedom back the way it used to be 1,000 years ago if you will join me. And what people do is decide for or against the administration of Christ.

To Gather for War

The earth at the end of the millennium will have an all-time high world population for Satan to draw from. It is now the view of the world planners that six billion people (which we have on the earth now) is four billion too many. So, some of you are going to have to go. And they feel that the biggest troublemakers should go first. So, you have ticket number one, because you're judging society and its leaders by the Word of God, and that's unforgivable. You claim to have a superior insight above all these people, and you claim to talk for God.

Now, you may smile about this, but I tell you that there's a conference coming up very shortly (I think it's in Chicago), where it's going to be dealing with world population. And the objective is going to be to strip down humanity to a two billion level. Now, they're doing a good job of that in Rwanda right now. But Rwanda is a pagan nation, and its God is Satan. Any place on the face of the earth where Satan is your God, you can count on bloodletting. Satan, the Lord told us, is a murderer from the beginning. And murder is his business. Bloodletting is his business.

Before Columbus came over with some frame of reference of biblical Christianity, it was not uncommon for them to put to death 50,000 people a year in order to satisfy their god Quetzalcoatl. And Quetzalcoatl was satisfied only if that body was ripped open and the heart pulled out while it was still pumping. And the priest held it up on high. Now, if you've never been to South America, go down to Chichicastenango. These Aztec places in Mexico are not too far away. Go down there and walk among those temples, and sense the spirits of demons who still walk those places which were devoted to that kind of thing. This is Satan's way. And bloodletting is what he's up to. And in Rwanda, he is stripping down that population because he is a murderer. So, this is the God of this world, and this is the person who wants to be the God of all the universe.

People like to make fun and like to discredit what Columbus did when he came. What he found here was horrendous – that human beings with any civilization recoil with horror from what those people did. And this was to satisfy their god. All cultures are not equal.

There is a recent article about San Jose, California, where the Hispanic population has such a powerful voice now on the city council. They are going to use tax money to build a statue of Quetzalcoatl, the god of the Aztecs, to whom all this bloodletting was done. How is that, folks? Down in your city square, in Christian-oriented America, there will be a statue of a pagan God who is known for the brutality of the sacrifices made by the thousands upon innocent people, to have their hearts ripped out of their breasts to satisfy his rage, so that he would treat them well. Don't tell me that multiculturalism in the United States is a good thing. The people in Washington are fools, and they are disoriented to reality. Cultures which come into our culture of Reformation Christianity are inferior on every account. And the more they come in, and are not diluted and absorbed by us, the greater is the evidence. It's all around us: evil; lawlessness; and, vileness.

So, this week, we had to go out and paint the mini-warehouse wall again to wipe off the graffiti, because we now have a culture where the police say, "We know exactly who did that, but we can't do a thing about it." So, the only thing the police do is park on our parking lot for a while, while they check with us in the office. Then we go to erase a little bit of multiculturalism. Satan is a filthy, vile creature from the very beginning.

And here at the end, he is not rehabilitated. A perfect imprisonment for him has taught him nothing. Worse yet, the world at the end of the millennium is primed with an all-time high population of unbelievers born during this golden age, and yet who reject Christ as Savior? This is why we tell you that there are some people that are a stone wall with the gospel. And you have some relatives like that, that your heart goes out to. You hate to think about the time that they're going to die. That's why we have all those requests on Wednesday nights, praying for relatives to be saved. And some of those relatives are never going to be saved, because the gospel doesn't get through to the mind of a human being until God the Holy Spirit opens that mind so the gospel can go in. And who is the one who blinds them? The Bible says that Satan, the god of this world, blinds their eyes, and that's why they don't go in.

Yet, within the heart of man is the sense of a need of some relationship with someone bigger and higher than himself. When he rejects Christ, he makes his own god. So, he goes into religion, which is another creation of Satan. Satan: the murderer; the blood letter; and, the filthy creature creates a system of human works and god in the image of man.

If you were to walk around the Aztec sites, the cities of the Aztec that have been uncovered from the jungles of Mexico, one of the things that you will see everywhere is images of the serpent. As you come down from that long square-sided temple (that you may have seen them) with the little steps, you go up to the altar at the top where the sacrifices were made, and the banisters running down is one long snake curving down. There's a connection. The devil has this symbol, and he stamped it. And anybody who thinks that that culture is not a culture that Satan created is out of touch with the facts that are staring him in the face.

So, here we have, at the end of the millennium, Satan released from the abyss. He comes out like a raging lion. He has been humiliated before the demons because he couldn't do a thing about staying out of that prison when God decided to put him in there. The earth is full now of multiplied billions. And I'll guarantee you that there will be a lot more than six billion people on the earth, because the earth is fully capable of sustaining multiply billions of people. These multitudes of unsaved people are readily going to respond to Satan's call to march against Jerusalem.

So, man, under life of an idea of environment, will gravitate toward evil, and rebel against God. He will respond to what is in himself – the old sin nature. Satan will use human reason to convince people to follow his guidance. This will not be a mindless act on people. They will really think that this is the better thing to do. They will do this just like people in government today. The liberals think that all the good things that they envision for people are good things to do. Those are right things to do, but they are human viewpoint delusions, out of touch with God's point of view.

So, these people are going to follow Satan because they think it's reasonable and the right thing to do. Nations probably, at this time, will have already (because of so many unbelievers among them) have begun to get restless and become indifferent toward Christ so that they are ripe for the picking. The prophet Zechariah indicates that that will happen, and that there will be an undercurrent of resistance after a while in these millennial nations. He tells us what God is going to do to them to punish them if they resist the authority of Christ. As long as Christ is on that throne, nobody during the millennium will be permitted to step out of line.

Zechariah 14:16-19: "Then it will come about that any who are left of all the nations that went against Jerusalem will go up from year-to-year to worship the King, the Lord of hosts, and to celebrate the feast of booths. And it will be that whichever of the families of the earth does not go to Jerusalem to worship the King, the Lord of hosts, there will be no rain on them." Once the millennium begins, once a year, every family goes up to Jerusalem, and it pays homage to Christ the King – publicly. There is going to be no nonsense. You're going to recognize that he is the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. As Paul said: "Every knee will bow to Him."

Now, somebody might say, "Ah, let's skip it. We have better things to do." If so, God will interdict their food supply, and the "Lord of hosts" is the expression for the Lord Jesus Christ. So, God will interdict their food supply, and He'll put pressure on them.

Thanksgiving

I've never seen one of the vulgarities of television called "The Simpsons," but I have read a good bit about it. On one review of the program, the punk little kids and the family sat down to eat, and they proceeded to say grace. The kid says, "Why do we have to thank Him for it? We earned it." ABC television thinks, "That's good. We should put that on the air because a lot of kids have careless parents who are going to let them sit and watch that TV program – that great devastation of a child who has a television in his own bedroom.

If you have a child with a television in his own bedroom, you'd better go out and rip it out today and do him a great service, because that's where that child gravitates and disappears to. He is watching everything that is degenerative and lowbrow, and insulting to his Christian heritage.

Evolutionary Humanism

When Satan comes out, he encourages them in that view. Man by nature is incurably evil, and incapable of righteousness. He will live in the millennium. There'll be no temptation from Satan and demons. There'll be no temptation from a world society that constantly impacts him with evil ideas through the entertainment media and publications and everything else. Everything will be righteous; holy; clean-cut; and, terrific. The best movies that have ever been made will be made then. The best entertainment that's ever been put out on television will be put out then. It will be ennobling to the core.

There's not going to be anything to lead you to evil except for one thing: the sin nature in man. Here you can see how totally depraved man by nature is, and how devastatingly powerful the sin nature is. They won't accept Christ as Savior, but they will accept the devil as their god. Unregenerate people, even under ideal social, economic, moral, political, and environmental conditions, still hate God. And when they get a chance, they'll rebel against God's authority.

Communism was wrong, and has been proven wrong, when it taught the doctrine that man is bad because of his external economic conditions. Communism taught that if you make the external economic conditions good, then man will act right. We knew that was a lie from Scripture because man has a sin nature. Here we have a preview of history when you'll have 1,000 years of the best of economic conditions, and man's degenerate nature will not be changed one iota.

So, what's the response of this appeal? He goes to gather them together for the war, and the number of them is like the sand of the seashore. Satan gathers an innumerable multitude of unbelieving youth – millions of them. They join him in the march against Jerusalem with demonstrations against the leadership of Jesus Christ. You're going to have all kinds of riots and demonstrations in the streets again, as they move from all parts of the world toward Jerusalem. And the mass becomes greater and greater as they surround the city of God. From the far reaches of the earth comes the mob to intimidate Christ the King.

Millions Join Satan

The Citadel of the Saints

The Beloved City of Jerusalem

Then in Psalm 87:2: "The Lord loves the gates of Zion more than all the other dwelling places of Jacob." God has a great affinity and love for Jerusalem. So, anyone who puts his hand out to strike against Jerusalem is playing a very dangerous game, because Jerusalem is God's special city, set aside for His people, the Jews, and especially set aside for His Son, Jesus Christ. Yasser Arafat had better watch his step in his current campaign to take Jerusalem away from the Jews, and make it the capital of the Palestinian state. He is he is playing with something very dear to God Himself.

So, the beloved city is the city of Jerusalem. It is in the center of the camp of the saints, the citadel. And it is surrounded by Satan's army of unbelievers. Jerusalem thus is under siege for miles in all directions. So, a new Gog and Magog situation is then in effect, where Satan has gathered nations to mount an attack against Jerusalem and the Jewish people, just as he did in the middle of the tribulation where the "Gog and Magog" term was first applied, where Gog was the leader, and Magog was his people. The Jewish people, as the world's leading nation, are again under intense hatred, as the people of God, which is what motivates the attack against them.

Weaponry

Technological Advances

Recently, I was looking through some old "Life" magazines. They were "Life" magazines in the 1940s, and here I lived through the 1940s. And I look at these "Life" magazine pictures and the advertisements, and they're so old-fashioned, and the people dressed so funny. I look at this, and I say, "This can't be 1940. I didn't look like this. Mrs. Danish kind of did, but I didn't look like this. I mean this is really weird. And it hits me how you have forgotten how it used to be, and you've become acclimated to the tremendous advancements that came in that postwar era.

Suddenly, you had a thing called television. It was never known before. I knew it. Back in 1933, the Chicago World's Fair had on display an early television. And I stood on the platform, and they put the camera on me, and there on the screen, kind of fuzzy, and not too clear, and not too many dots and clarity. But there I saw myself. I was one of the early television stars. And I was just a kid 12 years old. What do I know? I look at this thing and think, "Gee, that's cute – to take a picture of me there on that movie screen." But it wasn't a movie screen. It was it was a tube. It was an early television.

Then, after the war, its popularity exploded. They didn't know how to make them big at first. My brother-in-law, when he got a bigger television set, gave me his little one. And with it was a huge little magnifying prism. It was convex, and it was filled with mineral oil, and you put it in front of the television screen, and it made a big picture out of the little picture. We used to sit over in the old parsonage there (where the nursery is now), and we'd watch the television through the mineral water expansion screen. That's technology. That's advancement.

Can you begin to think what kind of advancements technologically, in every profession, and in every area of life, are going to take place during the millennium? I suspect that it won't be too much trouble for the rebels to take that technology that exists, and quickly convert it into weapons. All the space guns that you see in these cartoon characters that have these weapons that zap you with a magic ray – they'll be commonplace. And they'll be used in regular practices of life. They'll have applications, and they will be easily converted to wartime use.

So, they'll have weapons of one kind or another, and they will move in on Jerusalem.

Now, what is God doing? Well, He's watching this whole scene with a great deal of interest. Psalms 2:4 tells us how He feels about it: "He who sits in the heavens laughs, and the Lord scoffs at them." God looks at them; at this movement against His city of Jerusalem (His beloved city), and against His Son; at the Kings of the earth; at their leaders; and, at the people, and God laughs at them, and God scoffs at the ridiculousness of what they're attempting to do.

Satan was defeated on the very first day that he rebelled against God, but he didn't want to believe it, and it took centuries before it was finally proven to him that he's about to have that experience now.

Fire

Flames

Flames, from ancient times, have been a powerful weapon of war. It is a demoralizing, devastating element for an army to face. In ancient times, they had catapults which would throw globs of flaming material at an enemy. And at sea, if they got the range and had the accuracy. It was particularly devastating, because the globs were made of sticky stuff that was not easy to extinguish. And if they could hit a ship with a lot of this flaming material, it could very quickly get out of hand on those wooden structures. It was a frightful weapon because you have to back off. You can't run in there to do anything about it.

In modern times, in World War II, the flamethrower came into its own. This horrendous device could spew out a long tongue of flame so that it could reach into caves and into the places where the enemy had hidden. Even if it didn't hit the person, it would so eat up the oxygen in the caves that a person would suffocate in short order. He would die just from that drop in the oxygen that the flame (going in) created.

So, here we have something that is militarily horrendous. Flames are pulling down from heaven itself. It pours down from the sky, and comes upon this seething mass of human rebels which are surrounding Jerusalem and the saints. A ring of flame then surges out from Jerusalem over the miles of rebels which have been gathered on that plane from all directions. And the battle is over before a shot is fired. The whole scene will be a big dramatic repeat of Sodom and Gomorrah, where in a matter of minutes, there was nothing left but ashes on the plains of Sodom and Gomorrah. Here, these people will find themselves completely devastated into a pile of ashes.

The word here in the Scripture, telling us what this flame does to them, is that it "devours" them. The Greek word is "katesthio." The word "kata" means "down," and the word "esthio" means "eat." The Greek is more accurate. We say we eat up something, but the Greek says, "He eats down something." That is certainly more accurate, the way it really does work. It says that they are "eaten down." From the top down, they are completely eaten up. God's longsuffering of grace has come to an end for the rebels. In spite of an all-but-perfect world for 1,000 years under Jesus Christ, the multitude decides to vote for Satan against Jesus Christ the King.

So, they join Satan and his army of rebellion. Even the very visible presence and the pronouncements of this magnificent God-man Jesus Christ will not have won these millions to saving faith in him. That is very hard to see. I cannot believe the people in our society today that are nothing but scum balls, but they're rich, and they're prominent, and they're in the entertainment world, and they are out there in some dramatic public limelight, and people gravitate toward them. The kids want to wear their caps backwards, the way the rocking star hoods do. The girls want to wear the skimpy clothing the way the famous people do. What people are attracted to is absolutely amazing until you realize that birds of a feather flock together, and that the sin nature of man gravitates toward its own kind. That's why the filthy go for the filthy. Here, Jesus Christ – this pristine; sinless; godless; godly God-man is looked upon with revulsion by the people born in the millennium.

So, God has no choice but to be true to His own quality of justice by burning the rebels to ashes.

At the end of the Old Testament Bible, in the book of Malachi, in the last chapter, God makes a pause to warn people that this is what He's going to do to them at this point in history. Malachi 4:1: "'For behold, the day is coming, burning like a furnace. And all the arrogant, and every evildoer, will be chaffed. And the day that is coming will set them ablaze,' says, the Lord of hosts, 'so that will leave them neither root nor branch."

This is amazing. The end of Malachi is speaking about this judgment of God at the end of the millennium. Malachi says, "Take Him seriously. Think twice before you want to rebel against God." And remember that all this is going to be taught during the millennium. Don't forget that everybody is going to get doctrinal instruction until it's coming out of their ears. They are going to get it, and get it, and get it. They will all know the truth. There will be no more of people making up their own religious ideas then. And they will know this warning. The time is going to come that if you rebelled against the authority of the King, you'll get burned.

This human tragedy, of course, is but a brief preview of the eternal burning which awaits them in the lake of fire after they're resurrected to face the great white throne, which will be the next event we will study.

Thus, as fire pours from heaven upon them, these rebels go instantly from arrogance and self-confidence into the terror and pain of Hades as their bodies burn to a crisp and turn to ashes. We can perhaps imagine that the rebels and the demons who have allied themselves with Satan, as the flames engulfed them, may look for a moment pleadingly to their master Satan to do something to save them. But their pathetic eyes will receive no answer, for he will not be able to save himself.

This will be a vain hope. They then will realize too late that they have been deceived by Satan, who will have deceived himself most of all. Satan's last and greatest efforts to dethrone God and receive worship ends in abject failure. God proves that He is God, and the party is over. The Gog and Magog campaign of salvation and the world's unbelievers will prove to be a march for them into the jaws of death.

The Final Defeat of Satan

This final defeat of Satan will be a great victory also for God in settling the centuries-old angelic conflict. This is one reason that man was created – to settle the angelic conflict. Satan has challenged the justice of God in irreversibly condemning him and his demon angels to the lake of fire. They rebelled against God. God created the lake of fire, and said, "This is where you're going for your rebellion against Me." Satan says, "That's unfair. You don't even give us a chance."

Man was created to answer that attack; in part, to show just how truly just God is. For with man, God has taken a sinner who deserves to be in that lake of fire, and He has provided through Christ a salvation so that the one who meets God's requirement of trust in Christ as Savior goes to heaven. Now, that's fair. And God's hands are clean, because the sin has been paid for with death. And those who reject (the unbelievers) join Satan in the lake of fire, and that's fair. So, God, through man, demonstrates His absolute justice. Nobody can ever stand or ever will point to God and say, "You're unfair." The trophies of God's grace (these believers) have been secured without God compromising His justice, which demands death for unforgiving sins. So, saved humanity in this act is raised above the angels to the possession of God's absolute righteousness, and with full capacity for fellowship with God.

1 John 1:3 delights in pointing that out to us: "What we have seen and heard, we proclaim to you also: that you also may have fellowship with us, and indeed, our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ." Nobody could have fellowship with God if you did not possess absolute righteousness.

So, the angelic attack against the justice of God is settled. The angelic conflict is settled, and God has proven to be justice.

So ends the career of God's archenemy, Satan. The unbelievers loyal to Satan all die. The millennium, with their death, ends up as it began, with only believers on the whole earth. The millennium begins with only believers. And with this act fire judgment from God, all the unbelievers are removed once more from the earth, and the earth at the end of the millennium ends with all believers. Once and for all, the world's ignorant intellectuals will learn that they can ridicule and dismiss the Christian king-priests of Jesus Christ, but they cannot defeat them in the end. "Glory to God in the highest."

You Christians are the winners. Do not be intimidated by the fact that we struggle, and that the attacks are now coming against us because we have dared to stand up and say, "We want to have a voice in our society for righteousness." The Christians are coming. People may say, "What a terrible thing to happen to us." The ignorant intellectuals can ridicule; they can dismiss; and, they can make all the fun they wish of us. But God is going to win out, and we are on His side.

I close by directing you to three 3 passages of Scripture which signify the Word of God, the word of doctrine, which is your life. This is where it's at for you.

Hebrews 4:12: "For the Word of God is living and active, and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart."

2 Timothy 3:16: "All Scripture is inspired by God, and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work."

Finally: Romans 12:2: "And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind (that is, through doctrine), that you may prove what the will of God is, which is good and acceptable and perfect for you."

These are three great Scriptures that dignify the Word of God: Hebrews 4:12; 2 Timothy 3:16-17; and, Romans 12:2. To these you should remind yourself again and again so that you keep your priorities right.

Dr. John E. Danish, 1993

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