Bully's Blog

“[Revelation 20:7] tells us that the Millennium, which began 40 years after Jesus’ ascension, will not last all the way to His second coming. There is a brief period of time after the Millennium in which Satan will once again be released from the Abyss. Once again he will deceive the nations, Gog and Magog (prince and people; Ezekiel 38-39), to attack the Church. This final assault will be cut short by fire from heaven and the Last Judgment.”1

The allusion to Gog and Magog brings us to Ezekiel 38-39. Satan is Haman (head), ejected from the Emperor’s court but still desiring to destroy the people of God by deceiving the nations (body). The Lord, however, has prevented him from carrying out that plan. David Chilton writes:

“The stated goal of the Dragon’s deception is to entice the nations to join forces against Christ for the final, all-out war at the end of history. Satan’s desire from the beginning has often been to provoke a premature eschatological cataclysm, to bring on the end of the world and the Final Judgment now. He wants to rush God into judgment in order to destroy Him, or at least to short-circuit His program and destroy the wheat with the chaff (cf. Matt. 13:24-30). In a sense, he can be considered as his own agent provocateur, leading his troops headlong into an end-time rebellion that will call down God’s judgment and prevent the full maturation of God’s Kingdom.”2

Not only does this identify Satan as the true Amalek, surrounding the camp of the saints as he did in Exodus 17, and the beloved city as he did in Ezekiel 38, it also identifies this Conquest period of the greater Bible pattern with the Book of Esther. It is the time of God working unseen in the affairs of mankind, masterfully orchestrating all events for His ultimate purpose. After all, the kingdom of God is like leaven hidden in dough (Matthew 13:33). It is this process Satan would wish to stop.

The “binding” does not mean Satan has no influence in the world. He was bound in one aspect of his “ministry”, that of deceiving the nations. He is unable to mount another “universal” attack—a conspiracy of nations—against the church until he is released.

Finally, Satan is loosed again. And what does he immediately do? As He did in the late 60′sAD, he AGAIN gathers a conspiracy of nations against the church, this time on a world-scale. And what does this attack do AGAIN? It brings about the end of the age and a resurrection – this time on a world-scale. The second resurrection and the final judgment.

So, hyperpreterism misunderstands and truncates this entire process back into the first century. But this limits the conquest of Christ to Garden and Land. Jesus is now conquering the World. As Greater Amalek, Satan is powerless to gather the nations as “the sand by the sea”, while Jesus, as Greater Solomon, has been given all power to do so.

“Judah and Israel were as numerous as the sand by the sea in multitude, eating and drinking and rejoicing.” 1 Kings 4:20

 

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1 James B. Jordan, The Vindication of Jesus Christ, p. 84-85.
2 David Chilton, The Days of Vengeance, p. 504.

David Field1 says the Totus Christus, the Whole Christ, is “one and many in federal union = in covenantal oneness.” It is Jesus as head and the church as His body.

Whenever God does something in redemptive history, the Devil produces a counterfeit. Something I have just noticed about the Revelation is another aspect to this ‘evil twin’ pattern. It is a counterfeit Totus Christus.

After the ascension of Christ, Satan was thrown down from heaven to the Land, and took up residence in Herod’s Temple as Jesus predicted (Matthew 12:45). (Notice that Jesus’ ministry as Adam was heaven-garden-heaven, and Satan’s counterfeit usurping was thus garden-heaven-garden.)

Revelation then moves into a description of two warring armies, the saints with lion faces, and the ‘bad Nazirites.’ The Jews and Judaisers as Jezebel, the false church, are finally destroyed; the true church is massacred but ascends to be with Christ “in the air.”

So the church is Christ’s permanent body. Satan’s brief possession of Judah (Land Beast/False Prophet) and Rome (Sea Beast) was the Totus Diabolus in the Land. He will not be able to do such again until he is released for a short season at the end of World history.

I guess this also means that, in response to the marriage supper of the Lamb, and the faithfulness of Christ to His bride, the best Satan could manage was a one night stand.

1 http://davidpfield.blogspot.com/2006/10/totus-christus.html

Counter-FEET

The gospel was on its way to conquering the Roman empire. Jewish persecution had failed (read Acts). A flood of false doctrine had failed (read the later epistles for the fight). So Satan used persecution from a Jew-Gentile conspiracy to persecute the new church.

The thought is this:

The feet of the statue in Daniel 2 became Satan’s answer to the by-now successful “intermarriage” of Jews and Gentiles in one body, the Christian church. As a Jew-Gentile conspiracy, the metal man became an evil twin of Paul’s Jew-Gentile Tabernacle. With unclean feet of Roman iron intermarried with Edomite (red) clay, Judaism became the church of Esau.

(For more, see Esau’s Ladder).

by Jack Van Deventer

My Dear Woodworm,

As your most affectionate uncle and Senior Commander in Satan’s Army, I hereby write you to maintain your ongoing efforts to destroy the Enemy’s Church. You are but a Junior Tempter now, but with continued success you will surely rise through the ranks. Your orders are to attack and weaken the clergy, the leaders of the Opposition.

Your attack on the clergy should occur on three fronts. First, while allowing the preacher to pound the pulpit with regard to the truth of the Scriptures, have them deny their applicability. Tell them that the Old Testament is for ancient Israel, not for us. Teach them to hate God’s Law as being irrelevant, outdated, and harsh.

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“And he carried me away in the Spirit into a wilderness, and I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast that was full of blasphemous names, and it had seven heads and ten horns.

The woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet, and adorned with gold and jewels and pearls, holding in her hand a golden cup full of abominations and the impurities of her sexual immorality. And on her forehead was written a name of mystery: “Babylon the great, mother of prostitutes and of the Land’s abominations.” (from Revelation 17)

The woman’s riches and robe are described after her “bestial relations.” She made her priestly office into a counterfeit kingdom. She thought she was rich, but was in fact poor, blind and naked.

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God uses symbols not only to reveal the spiritual character of physical people and events, but also to demonstrate their relationships to each other.

For instance, when Satan is called a serpent, it is because he is using the weapon of deceit, spewing it out of his mouth like counterfeit living water. When Satan is called a dragon, he is using the weapon of death, inciting a mob or government to kill God’s people.

The land and the sea are the physical land and sea in Genesis, but once God narrows His focus down to a priestly nation, Israel becomes the Land, and the Gentiles become the Sea. This demonstrates the boundary set by God between Jews and Gentiles. When Israel sins, the Gentiles rush in like a flood.

And the LORD said, “Arise, anoint him, for this is he.” Then Samuel took the horn of oil and anointed him in the midst of his brothers. And the Spirit of the LORD rushed upon David from that day forward. And Samuel rose up and went to Ramah.
Now the Spirit of the LORD departed from Saul, and a harmful spirit from the LORD tormented him. And Saul’s servants said to him, “Behold now, a harmful spirit from God is tormenting you. Let our lord now command your servants who are before you to seek out a man who is skillful in playing the lyre, and when the harmful spirit from God is upon you, he will play it, and you will be well.” (1 Sam. 16:12-16)

Does God send evil spirits? …

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“…since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us…” (Hebrews 12:1)

NOTE: THIS POST HAS BEEN REMIXED AND INCLUDED IN GOD’S KITCHEN.

To defeat Satan is to expose his lies to the truth – to unmask him. We see lots of unmaskings in the Bible. Many of these use the saints as bait. The true natures of Pharaoh, of Job’s accusers, and of Haman and the enemies of God in Esther were all exposed when God’s people became weak. A corpse always brings out the dirty birds (Matthew 24:28), the ‘Edomite’ false brothers waiting to loot a razed Jerusalem.

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Both the Red Sea and Jordan were doors of water and blood. They were two-edged flaming swords at the doorway to God.

And the fifth angel blew his trumpet, and I saw a star fallen from heaven to earth, and he was given the key to the shaft of the Abyss. He opened the shaft of the Abyss, and from the shaft rose smoke like the smoke of a great furnace, and the sun and the air were darkened with the smoke from the shaft. Revelation 9:1-2

The fifth trumpet aligns with both the Feast of Trumpets, and Deuteronomy. It is the summoning of armies on Day 5, swarms of birds and fish filling sky and sea as glorious clouds. The Altar of the Abyss, in this case, is now an evil twin of the Altar of Incense, a demonic response to the ascension of Christ and His new government. Continue reading