For this month’s Pastor’s Ponderings article, I thought I’d return to the pile of questions the youth shared with me at their lock-in back in February. I think you’ll agree with me that we have some inquiring young minds being trained up by God the Holy Spirit.
Question – Is the devil coming down to earth one day?
Answer – The answer is the devil is already on the earth. And he has been on earth for quite
some time!
According to the first book of the Bible, Genesis Chapter 3, verse 1, God made the serpent – “Now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. “ The serpent in the Garden of Eden was the Devil (Satan). Satan tempted our first parents, Adam and Eve, into sinning against God by disobeying His commands. Satan lured them away from God. They hid in the Garden. Defeated, afraid, and dejected.
The first two chapters of the Old Testament book of Job reveal further that the devil is already here. Here is Job 1:6-8: “Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan also came among them. And the LORD said to Satan, “From where do you come?” So Satan answered the LORD and said, “From going to and fro on the earth, and from walking back and forth on it.” Then the LORD said to Satan, “Have you considered My servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, one who fears God and shuns evil?”
If the devil was “going to and fro on the earth, and from walking up and down on it,” he must have already been on earth.
One last verse is found in the New Testament – 1 John 4:3. “… and every spirit that does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is not of God. And this is the spirit of the Antichrist (“against Christ”), which you have heard was coming, and is now already in the world.”
These three names for the evil one suggest a dangerous, strong, and difficult adversary. We dare not attempt to defeat him by yourself. You’ll lose every time. Actually, Jesus Christ is Who is coming down to earth one day – in power and glory! There is a day coming when the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord.”
Satan is a defeated foe. The war being presently fought in the spirit world is a very real one. Let’s keep up our guard, for our adversary walks around like a roaring lion seeking whom he could devour. (I Peter 5:8) All for now – see you Sunday? Pastor Daren
