SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 6/2/2015
8:34 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
The Dragon (Satan)
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Revelation
12:3-4
Message of the
verses: “3 Then another sign appeared in
heaven: and behold, a great red dragon having seven heads and ten horns, and on his heads were seven diadems. 4 And his
tail swept away a third of
the stars of heaven and threw them to the earth. And the dragon stood before the woman
who was about to give birth, so that when she gave birth he might devour her child.”
I wrote the following short section
about these verses on 08/06/2005 “These
verses are surely speaking of Satan, and as far as the seven heads and the ten
horns this will be brought up again and will be dealt with then. It has always been the desire of Satan to
destroy the way for the Messiah to come, but he failed at that and even though
He may have though he succeeded when he
had Christ killed in reality that is what sealed his eventual fate of spending
eternity in hell. Verse four seems to speaking about a time in the past when
Satan rebelled against God and took a third of the angels with him, but it also
speaks of when Satan tried to kill the Messiah when He was born, but of course never
happened. There are times when it is
difficult to understand all of the symbolism that John wrote about in this book;
however the best commentary for the book of Revelations is the rest of the
Scriptures.” I want to expand on what I
wrote then in the rest of today’s SD.
First of all we want to be reminded that John saw
another sign and this sign is the emergence of a new character that is called the
“great red dragon.” John says that this
sign appeared in heaven. Now we realize that
Satan is not a dragon, but as we learned earlier these signs represent
different things and in this case the sign represents Satan as the first sign,
the woman represents the nation of Israel.
John MacArthur writes “The symbolic language used to describe him
pictures the reality of his person and character. Only in Revelation is Satan referred to as a
dragon; before that he is called (among other names) a serpent (Gen.3:1ff; 2
Cor. 11:3). A dragon is a far more
terrifying symbol. In the Old Testament
the same Hebrew word translated dragon (Isa. 27:1; 51:9) is also translated
monster or sea monster (Gen. 1:21; Job 7:12; Pss. 74:13; 148:7; Jer. 51:34;
Ezek. 29:3; 32:2). It pictures a large
ferocious, and terrifying animal. Red,
the color of fiery destruction and bloodshed, further stresses Satan’s vicious,
deadly, destructive nature. In the words
of Jesus, ‘He was a murderer from the beginning (John 8:44). The Hebrew word for ‘serpent’ (nachash) used in Genesis 3:1 is used
interchangeably in some texts with the Hebrew word for dragon (tannin) (cf. Ex. 7:9, 15). So the animal Satan used in the Garden of
Eden was a reptile, but one not yet cast down to its belly (Gen 3:14). Likely, it was more upright—a dragon standing
on two legs, cursed to walk on four legs close to the ground, or slither like a
snake. Red is a fitting color for the
dragon, since he attacks both the woman and her child.” I never thought of the term “cast down” to
the animal that Satan used to speak to the woman, but that does make sense when
you think about it as that animal was cast down to the ground and we will see
later in our text that Satan will be cast down to the earth never to return to
heaven again, for when he will be cast down to earth the next step will be the
lake of fire shortly after that, but we are getting ahead of ourselves as we
will speak of this later.
In the book of Ezekiel and chapter twenty-nine,
verses 1-5 we read of Pharaoh who was the enemy of God, and as we read this
section we will see that it captures the essence of the frightening imagery
which is used to describe Satan:
“ 1 In the
tenth year, in the tenth month, on the twelfth of the month, the word of the
LORD came to me saying, 2 "Son of
man, set your face against
Pharaoh king of Egypt and prophesy against him and against all Egypt. 3 "Speak and
say, ’Thus says the Lord GOD, "Behold, I am against you, Pharaoh king of
Egypt, The great monster
that lies in the midst of his rivers, That has said, ’My Nile is mine, and I myself
have made it.’ 4 “I will put hooks in your jaws And make the fish of
your rivers cling to your scales. And I will bring you up out of the midst of
your rivers, And all the fish of your rivers will cling to your scales. 5 “I
will abandon you to the wilderness, you and all the fish of your rivers; You
will fall on the open field; you will not be brought together or gathered. I
have given you for food to the beasts of the earth and to the birds of the sky.”
Let us now speak of the dragon having seven heads
and ten horns and also on those heads were seven diadems. In order to understand this we have to
understand that when Adam and Eve sinned in the Garden of Eden Satan has been
allowed by God to rule the world. Now he
will continue to do so up until the sounding of the seventh trumpet which is
seen in Revelation 11:15. Now remember
that once we began to study chapters 12-14 we have gone back in time looking at
the Tribulation Period through the eyes of antichrist who will be led by
Satan. The word diadem speaks of royal
crowns which symbolize power and authority.
Satan has headed up seven consecutive world empires beginning with
Egypt, and then Assyria, Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, Rome, and Antichrist’s
future empire which will take place during the Tribulation Period. This final
kingdom headed up by antichrist will be a ten-nation confederacy and this is
seen by the ten horns. Let us look at
Daniel 7:23-25 “23 "Thus he said:
’The fourth beast will be a fourth kingdom on the earth, which will be
different from all the other kingdoms and will devour the whole earth and tread it down
and crush it. 24 ’As for
the ten horns, out of this kingdom ten kings will arise; and another will arise after
them, and he will be different from the previous ones and will subdue
three kings. 25 ’He will speak out
against the Most High and wear
down the saints of the Highest One, and he will intend to make
alterations in times and in law; and they will be given into his hand for a time, times, and half a
time.” For more on these verses
in Daniel you can look at my Spiritual Diaries dated 09-06-2013 and 09-08-2013.
I mentioned that God has allowed Satan to be the
ruler of the world since the fall of man, and we also must realize that God is
the One who is completely in control, but when we look at the temptations of
Jesus in both Luke and Matthew we see that He did not argue with Satan when
Satan offered Him his kingdom. Satan has
been allowed to get into the governments of the world over time and will surely
get into the government of the rule of Antichrist during the Tribulation
Period. We will look at this more in
detail as we continue our study of this 12th chapter of Revelation.
Spiritual meaning for my
life today: I am thankful that the Lord Jesus
provided me a way to get out of the kingdom of darkness and be brought into the
Kingdom of Light through His life, death, burial, and resurrection from the
dead.
My Steps of Faith
for Today: To love the Lord, with all of my heart, soul,
mind, and strength, and to understand more of His love and thus live in the
love of the Lord today.
Answer
to yesterday’s Bible question: “His eyes
were put out” (2 Kings 25:7).
Today’s
Bible question: “What happened to Saul
of Tarsus near Damascus?”
Answer
in our next SD.
6/2/2015
9:34 AM
No comments:
Post a Comment