The Great Invasion – part 1: War Games

SATAN’S WAR EFFORTS

The Advent and Incarnation of Jesus is the most important event that has occurred thus far in human history.  Now that we have established his mission and identity, it’s time to examine the events of His actual time on earth.

The birth and life of Jesus is among the most well-known and celebrated biographies in history.  However, we’re going to look at that life from a different perspective: that of his enemies.

When Adam failed in the First Dispensation, he not only lost his spiritual connection to God, he also lost his kingdom (and man has been trying in vain to reclaim it without God ever since).  From man’s perspective, the coming of Christ is an amazing story of love, sacrifice, and triumph as Jesus fulfilled His mission to redeem man and reclaim the kingdom.

But to Satan and his minions – who usurped possession of the earth from Adam – the advent of the Redeemer was an act of spiritual warfare!

The view from the other side

Last year, we saw that the war between those who support God’s plan and those who oppose it represents the seed-plot of all history.  God promised that the coming Redeemer would herald the end of Satan’s dominion on earth and the ultimate destruction of his followers.

Of course, that idea wasn’t terribly attractive to the bad guys, so they set about to prevent the Redeemer’s coming by every means at their disposal.

It’s interesting to take a journey through the Bible and watch how the spiritual war progressed.  As God revealed more details about how the Redeemer would come, Satanic attack became more focused and intensified through the dispensations.

Corrupting the seed

When God said that the “Seed of a woman” would be his undoing, Satan knew that the Redeemer would be a man (an offspring of Eve).  When he got the first male born to Eve to kill the second (and get cursed by God), Satan seemed to be doing pretty well in the war…

Except Eve kept having children.  Who in turn had children of their own, ad nauseam.   Offing them one by one would be too inefficient, so the satanic minions came up with a better idea – corrupt the entire gene pool so there would be no “pure” men left.  And they were amazingly successful!  After over 1500 years of interbreeding, the Bible strongly implies that all the families of the earth were corrupted…

Except one.  Of course the head of that family was a man named Noah, who built a big ol’ boat to preserve his family when God literally flushed Satan’s plans down the drain.

Taking the battle national

 A couple generations later, God revealed that the Redeemer would be a descendant of a man named Abraham; specifically the 12 sons of his grandson Jacob.  Once Jacob’s family was securely entrenched in Egypt, Satan and his local minions set about wiping them out.  He influenced a new Pharaoh to enslave them for 400 years, then another Pharaoh had all their new born male children slaughtered…

Except one.  That one child turned out to be Moses who was adopted as that Pharaoh’s daughter and lived right under his nose for 40 years.  He then freed his fellow Jews from Egypt and brought them to the land God promised them during Abraham’s time.

But since Satan knew about the land promise of Israel, he had over 400 years to lay down land mines.  He infested the land with Nephilim (a la the 2^nd Dispensation).  All the Israelites were afraid to enter the land and rejected God’s promises…

Except two.  God promoted the two faithful guys into leadership, let the unfaithful generation die off, and their children took over the land and drove out the Nephilim.

King Slayer

When God let it be known that the Redeemer would be of the royal line of King David, Satan targeted his descendants.  And again, he was largely successful.  Of all the subsequent kings of Israel, only two of them – Hezekiah and Josiah earned God’s favor.

But the worst of the bunch was the last sovereign king of Israel, Jechoniah (AKA Coniah), who was so bad that God pronounced a “blood curse” on him saying that none of his blood descendants would ever be king.

This posed a serious problem.  One of Jesus’ qualifications was that He be King of the Jews and a descendant of David.  How could He be BOTH if the royal line was cursed?  At this point, Satan probably figured that he finally had his victory…

Technical Knock Out

Except God took advantage of a technicality.  A look at the genealogy of Jesus in the book of Luke shows that Mary was a descendant of David – but through his second son Nathan who was NOT a part of the royal line.  The genealogy in the book of Matthew shows that Joseph, Jesus’ LEGAL father WAS a royal descendant of David (including the cursed Jeconiah).

Thus Jesus was legally of the royal line through Joseph and could make a claim to the throne, but He wasn’t subject to the blood curse because of his birth mother’s lineage.

I’m firmly convinced that God has a derisive sense of humor, and you can see traces of it in the way He has (and continues to) counter Satan’s machinations.  Every time Satan seems close to achieving his goal, God snatches victory from the jaws of seeming defeat much the same way Lucy always pulls the football away from Charlie Brown

Satan’s failure to stop the advent of the Redeemer didn’t end with the birth of Jesus.  In fact, his war efforts escalated since he had a single person to focus on.  In the next post, we will look at the life of Jesus from the perspective of the Great Invasion.

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E. M.