#2. “The Enemy.”


We meet references to an “enemy” in one form or another in thirty out of the thirty-nine books of the English Old Testament, and in thirteen of the twenty-seven books of the New Testament. If we were to widen the scope to include all references to enmity, strife, contentions, war, battle, arms and armour, we should have to include a still larger proportion of the books of both Testament.

There is one enemy however who stands out above all others, and who antedates them all: “The enemy . . . . . is the devil” (Matt. xiii. 39). He is called: “That old (or ancient) serpent, called the Devil, and Satan” (Rev. xii. 9 and xx. 2). The “Devil” of the New Testament is the “Satan” of the Old Testament, and both are titles of one who is known as “The ancient Serpent”. Now the “serpent” is the one that beguiled Eve in the garden of Eden (II Cor. xi. 3), and consequently must have come into the present creation, and have originally belonged to the earlier creation, which, we shall discover, had passed away before the advent of that creation which had been pronounced “very good”.

We learn from the testimony of the Lord Himself, that the devil was “a murderer” from the beginning and that he “abode not in the truth” (John viii. 44). “He is a liar and the father of it” (John viii. 44). Deceit, wiles, craftiness, the subtlety of the serpent, combined with the ferocity of a roaring lion, and the deceptive semblance of an angel of light, go to make up his fell equipment for the dreadful strife.

Satan is represented as a great dignitary, so much so that even Michael durst not bring against him “a railing accusation” (Jude 9). He is called “The prince of this world”, “the prince of the power of the air”, and “The god of this age”. Beneath his control are his “angels” (Rev. xii. 7), and he is represented as having fallen from heaven, dragging with him “a third part of the stars” (Rev. xii. 4), which in the book of the Revelation, represent “angels” (Rev. i. 20).

At the time of our Lord’s advent, the kingdoms of this world and the glory of them were under the sway of Satan (Luke iv. 6, 7); and the offer to transfer this sovereignty to the Saviour for one act of “worship” reveals the heart of the dread antagonism which runs throughout the scriptural record. Together with other “sons of God”, Satan had access to the throne of God and exercised a terrible and extensive power over man and his affairs, as the record of Job reveals.

As it is unthinkable that God, Who cannot look upon iniquity, and Whose very essence is holiness, could have created the murderer and liar that we know Satan had become “from the beginning”, some explanation must be sought of the existence and presence of such a being acting as the tempter in the garden of Eden. The naming of that garden places in our hands the key, for the prophet Ezekiel reveals a being who was “perfect” from the day in which he was created, yet in whom, at length, “iniquity” had been found. This being is described as having been “full of wisdom and perfect in beauty”, and, what is to the point for our present quest, he had “been in Eden the garden of God” (Ezek. xxviii. 11-15). No other created being beside Adam and Eve and the serpent is recorded as having “been in Eden, the garden of God”. This “servant”, or nachash, as the Hebrew word is, means “The shining one”, and the description of Ezek. xxviii. 13 fully bears this out. Moreover, in structural correspondence and directly related to the work of the serpent in Gen. iii., are placed the “Cherubim”, and a glance at Ezek. xxviii. 16 will show that this title once belonged to Satan, for in Ezek. xxviii. 16 he is addressed as the “covering cherub”.

In II Pet. iii. 5 and 6 it is intimated that before the present Adamic world, which was “created and made” in six days, with special reference to mankind, there had been another “world”, which had passed away. This is indicated in Gen. i. 2 where we meet with chaos and darkness over the earth. To this period the Apostle refers in Eph. i. 4, when he speaks of “the foundation” of the world, and the world katabole and its cognates, mean an “overthrow”.

Man therefore has never known what it is to live in a world really at peace. A state of war already existed, before Adam was created, and this head of a new race was immediately the subject of attack, temptation and deceit, and overthrown. When we look at a little child, born in a world already at war, we are but looking at a faint picture of all mankind. War goes on around him, intrudes into his home, his heart and his whole being. Sin and death already were holding sway over the earth, before he commenced his brief career. The unsaved man is often the unconscious tool of the great adversary, and, should he step for a moment outside of his position “in Christ”, the believer, too, is liable to attack. But “we are not ignorant of his devices”, wrote the Apostle, and if these articles open the eyes of any to the nature of both the enemy himself, and of the conflict in which we are engaged, we shall not have laboured in vain.

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(From Te Berean Exxpositor, volume 31, page 179).

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